I hit the jack pot Friday when I found this zenith Walton on craigs list and was first to respond , picked it up 1 hour later. This is my first Walton and was happy to get so cheap ,150$ what a bargain. It does need a lot of work , but that's ok its not like I never restored a radio before. It,s a 7j232 which is the baby of the Walton line up, what I have read is it also is the rarest , but the least desirable , 12 volt and 110v.No eye tube, I still am very happy to get one that cost so little. Cabinet is good shape , shouldn't be a problem but the chassis has rust and the dial is roached out, I will completely repaint chassis and redo the outer dial with the decals from radio daze, ive done em before. Speaker will be re coned and new 12v cables. ect. Henry Harmony a good friend found a Walton 9s232 for 50$ last month at antique shop . Hard to find a Walton for these kind of prices, it does happen but is rare, My biggest find was my PHILCO 23x, for the amazing sum of 75$ all complete. Now that is rarer than any Walton I can tell ya that . I will post more pictures as time goes bye for updates on restoration of the Walton. Good night from the Big state of TEXAS.
(This post was last modified: 07-07-2015, 09:59 PM by Fred Taylor.)
There sure is < if your a radio collector or restorer there are plenty of antique radios around, but coming across a Walton like I did for that price is rare even down here.
Got it tore down and started the chassis , stripped the outer dial assembly and painted black , decal will be applied and cleared over, chassis is stripped and bead blasted because of rust, will paint hammered copper finish like original, tuning condenser is remover and will be cleaned and polished, all cans removed but don't know exactly what I should do on those because there not shinny or real smooth from factory, just a flat swirl looking aluminum, any suggestions on those? Should just recap with modern caps showing or reuse old wax cases? Nobody going to see them ?
Got your work cut out on this one. I think that greenish color on the cans is cadmium some type of metal reaction, I think. Have heard to be careful cleaning it off. I'm sure someone will respond with what best to do with the cans.
Good luck and look foward to your restore of this one.
(06-21-2015, 09:10 PM)Mike Wrote: Got your work cut out on this one. I think that greenish color on the cans is cadmium some type of metal reaction, I think. Have heard to be careful cleaning it off. I'm sure someone will respond with what best to do with the cans.
Good luck and look foward to your restore of this one.
No cadmium, it's just aluminum oxide, typical of a barn set in that the aluminum has oxidized to teh point of looking like an old galvanized steel garbage can.
Regards
Arran
Fred;
For cleaning up those aluminum cans I would start by washing them in a TSP solution with hot water, that may brighten them up a bit without making them shiny. For the tuning condenser you may want to try soaking it in an Evaporust type product, apparently it will remove the rust without harming the aluminum plates, a fellow on You Tube did that with some out of some real rustbucket sets and they came up quite decent.
Regards
Arran
P.S Who needs a magic eye tube, it's just a gimmick, and it's a farm set anyhow. Even if it originally had one it was a 6T5 which are made from unobtanium, so you would be using a 6U5 or 6E5.
(This post was last modified: 06-22-2015, 02:03 AM by Arran.)
Coming along nicely, tore down chassis and bead blasted , painted zenith copper ,redone all of the shutter dial assembly, the short wave band dials where in good shape , the outer dial standard broadcast I have to strip and , repaint satin black and add new dial decal then clear over with semi gloss clear, I did tint the clear to give the dial decal a gold tone , aged it a little like the other dials but may have went a little to much on the color buts looks good , very close , its not perfect and very very hard to get decal just right,start on cabinet tomorrow and finish up on chassis, electrical will be next and speaker.
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