Spring has Sprung, let the radio work begin again :)

Hey gang,

Well spring has sprung and it's warmed up enough to get back outside and do some cabinet work, so I'm slowly getting back into the swing of things again.

The place is looking great OM

Raven

Raven where have you been hibernating all this time?

hee hee, been curled up snoozing in my cave ha ha

Raven

I'm glad to hear from you raven, i thought you may have fallen of the planet.

I am thrilled spring is hear now as well. I can't wait to get back out in the garage and start on some work. I gave away most of my working raios and i am now down to one that works and about 10-20 on the to-do list for the summer and every time i turn around it gets bigger.

Thanks for the complements on the site,
Hope to see u around,
Robert

Hey, Raven! Welcome back to the land of the conscious!
Bill Cahill

Well Here in Michigan spring has played around with us and we have had a few 70 degree days now, we are in a cold snap..back to the lows of 28 and 33 degrees..Last
week end I managed to get the yard Raked out and the grass cut..Will be digging in the Workshed..and Lining up the Radios..have three that need work..redoing a massive
repair on a Philco 36-6..Cabinet..also some work on two Philco 46-250 Bakelites..waiting
for all the garage and yard sales to fire up..will be looking for more to work on..

I finally got spring in my sproing. Psst!!! I too am cleaning up my disheveled computer-radio room.

Well I don't believe myself, I have been on ARF for over 4 years and never did know anything about Old tube radios and their troubleshooting methods.

I have spent a lot of time reading all the solutions that I thought were of interest to me, and made some comments in hints from my general electronics training and work and college soldering circuit card repairs, but no experience specifically BC radios of the tube type.

Soooo Yesterday I talked to my wife and complained how I can never get any thing done because My computer radio room is so full of junk I don't remember where I stacked it and in which pile.

Enough of this dreaming about repairs,
so I went out and Got a small work bench, (had to assemble it, instructions said two persons working on assemble 2hrs time to finish.

Boy a second set of hands would have been nice, IT ONLY TOOK ME from 6pm day before yesterday Till Last nite at 6pm.
With no breaks till 2AM then started again around 9am the afore mentioned finished time. I had to move almost everything into the living room just to get elbow room to flip the bench this way and that way just to get all the pieces and hardware together.

Then I got a wire shelf with 5 shelves and put that togather. That was only suppose to be a 20 minute job,
but again no help so Two hours.

I finally had time to steam clean the carpet this afternoon, about 3 hours of double cleaning and rinsing . Now even my wife can get into my room with her electric wheelchair.

My next project is to tackle put all my screwdrivers, pliers, test equipment, and radios stored so I can find them. LOL

I have a number of older books on repair so I am now ready to dive right in.
I have a Hallicrafters transoceanic that was working till I put it in the closet and 6 months ago I pulled it out and Nada.

That will be for starters, I have the set apart and found someone had already bypassed the selenium rectifier so I will test the diode first.

I did a dumb thing by pulling the tubes out while it was on and now I know thats a no-no.
AH WELL.

Thats my story and I'm sticking to it.

Maybe time for new tubes?
You need to re cap the radio. But, you picked a hard set to start out with.
How about starting with something simpler?
A nice 5 tube ac dc would be a good start.
Bill Cahill
How much soldering, and, test experience have you got?
Tube stuff runs on much higher voltages than most SS equipment does.......
Also, with AC DC equipment, good safety equipment, such as a variac, and, an isolation transformer are a big help.

While I did build a one tube radio in High School, and collected a lot of car radios to salvage, but that was then and was too long ago.

I have a variac and an Isolation transformer. I need to build a series light bulb for testing AC/DC sets for sure!
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I only have one AC/DC set and my wife would kill me if I touched that. cause it still plays, DRATS.

I have 3 boat anchors, all Hallicrafters. The only one that doesn't play is the SR20.

I guess I will have to start renovating my test equipment first.
I have a signal generator, a Jackson 640.
a signal tracer, Conar 230.
and a RCP Multi-tester model 447-B. Never used it!
I do have an advanced Digital multimeter from RS and an Analog Multimeter (FET ) also RS
I have an old military multimeter with pin jacks but I haven't used it - more for a collector than any thing.
I also have obtained 2 O'scopes.
One is an Eico IO-12 it isn't working yet but I do have a probe for it but I haven't taken it (probe) out of its bag since I purchased it.
the other is an Telequipment S51b, I need probes for that one.

The power cords are brittle and cracked, so I will look into that for a start.

I have two car radios that were scarfed from the trash.
I am having a hard time finding 18-22 Gage 17 strand wire, thats 300-600 volt type locally.
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On another subject:
My wife Has an electric Scooter that was out in the garage, and I dropped the charger. I repaired the case and it seemed to work. But I went out a couple a days ago and the dumb thing wont charge the batteries (24-volt type) so I guess I will start on that and see if it's putting out any DC. It maybe not because the batteries are dead although when I first plugged it in I had an indication of voltage on the cart itself. But when I checked latter the indicator on the cart was no lites at all. and the Charger itself has three indicators, 1 red power on which is working, yellow-charging which doesn't lite and green full charge which also doesn't lite. I think if the battery is flat then It wont charge (I'm guessing on that) so what I will do is get my trust OLD selenium battery charge and hook it up to each battery in turn.

I don't know what effect the charger will have on Gel cells but thats the only option I have right now. Any knowledge on the subject anyone?

Thanks.

Yes. I don't think the old charging system is compatible.
You probably broke the PC board in power supply when you dropped it. Try to fix that. If it is a no go, I"d say time for a new power supply.
Bill Cahill

Hey, resistance. You didn't say what the scooter is used for. Handicap or street use. If it has gel-cell batts a standard charger should work. They are also lead-acid. I have a Vespa 200 with a gell-cell 12 v batt and my standard charger works well. I used to build custom electric wheel chairs so I kinda know abt that. Also, I assembled and serviced many electric golf carts. I've repaired many chargers. Should be easy. Dump the selinium. Does it use 1 -24v batt or 2 -12v batts? OT

It uses 2-12v Its a Bruno, for Handicap use. they used a Abrams tank turret motor for the drive unit, very husky, will go up a 20 degree grade.

Found out my problem(s)
One battery would take a charge an the other one wouldn't. The voltage was blocked because of a non-tight connector. Fixed that and still wouldn't take a charge, know why? the electronic type charger wont charge it if its below 10v. So I used my selenium charger (30 years old) and it has a built in circuit breaker, which tripped because it was pouring in over 8 amps. (its rated max is 6 amp) so I switched it down to 6 volts and watched the current drop, after three minutes I switched it back to 12 v and the current leveled off at around 3-4 amps.
I left it on for 4 hours then used the newer electronic switching charger 12 v., after all three lights were showing back and fourth, I reinstalled the batteries in the scooter and put the Scooter 24v charger back on. I used a wall timer to turn off and on for 24 hours and it seems to be working now.

Get rid of the selenium- NO WAY not after that experience. Its more reliable from the get-go, NO WAY Jose
Thanks for info oldtimer