4 hours ago
First of all, this is not a restoration. This radio has been in constant use for as long as anyone in my family can remember and how it came to look and operate the way it does now is its appeal -- lots of family memories around it.
My brother, who lives in North Carolina, recently called me and told me that it had quit working one day and he was gonna ship it to me to see if I could get it working again. Since I was certain there are shops in his neck of the woods that could have fixed it, I figured he just thought I would enjoy doing it for the family -- and he was right.
When it got here, I gave it a checkup and made note of the 88 years of replacements and changes and its overall condition. The summary of my finds is that it's old.
It had two bad tubes (the filaments were open), the 6N7G and the 5Y4G rectifier. He didn't send me the big ol' speaker so I used my oscilloscope to look at the output and it's now producing pretty clean audio.
During the once over I noticed that the flex coupler was in bad shape. In fact, both ears holding the leather pieces were broke. When I removed the coupler, I noticed that the tuning mechanism was locked up. The station selector handle was broken off and the only thing that would turn was the vernier shaft but the gear on the other end of the shaft wouldn't budge. Since it was attached to the big gear from the station selector that explained why it wouldn't turn either.
I took the tuning mechanism apart and found that all of the pieces worked if they were not connected to the vernier drive gear. So where I am now is either in need of a complete tuning mechanism, or a working vernier shaft, or some way to disassemble and repair the shaft I have. I'm including a picture that shows the shaft and describes the issue with it.
I would appreciate any help you can offer for any of these options.
My brother, who lives in North Carolina, recently called me and told me that it had quit working one day and he was gonna ship it to me to see if I could get it working again. Since I was certain there are shops in his neck of the woods that could have fixed it, I figured he just thought I would enjoy doing it for the family -- and he was right.
When it got here, I gave it a checkup and made note of the 88 years of replacements and changes and its overall condition. The summary of my finds is that it's old.
It had two bad tubes (the filaments were open), the 6N7G and the 5Y4G rectifier. He didn't send me the big ol' speaker so I used my oscilloscope to look at the output and it's now producing pretty clean audio.
During the once over I noticed that the flex coupler was in bad shape. In fact, both ears holding the leather pieces were broke. When I removed the coupler, I noticed that the tuning mechanism was locked up. The station selector handle was broken off and the only thing that would turn was the vernier shaft but the gear on the other end of the shaft wouldn't budge. Since it was attached to the big gear from the station selector that explained why it wouldn't turn either.
I took the tuning mechanism apart and found that all of the pieces worked if they were not connected to the vernier drive gear. So where I am now is either in need of a complete tuning mechanism, or a working vernier shaft, or some way to disassemble and repair the shaft I have. I'm including a picture that shows the shaft and describes the issue with it.
I would appreciate any help you can offer for any of these options.
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