[OldRestorer]

I finished my RCA but I don't know about the grill cloth...
What do you guys think?

I did a full recap and only had to replace one resistor that was 500K and measured 1.3M! it was 5% tolerance too,, Eek... This was quite an easy restore since the radio was playing so well before.

 I also restored my Zenith 6-S-511 which was a bit harder... We all know about Zeniths cramped chassisand the "touch a wire and the rubber cracks off" so I went ahead and replaced what needed it. The presets were extremely dirty and when you put it on broadcast it would just fizzle.. A gallon of cleaner and filing the points and she is all better.... 

 The one thing I did not do was bypass the 6X5G...
Do you guys think I should do this for safety reasons?
I have done it before and I have it saved that you disconnect the wire to pins 3/5 and the wire to pin 8. Then add a diode and a 150ohm resistor at 5w in series...

Am I off?

Thanks  

   

[OldRestorer]

Cool picture of the 5Q5...

[Radioroslyn]

>Am I off?
Don't know? Is your pilot light on??

[OldRestorer]

I figured I would get a crack answer....

[JosCallinet]

Your buddy akachuck has a pretty cool Sentinel set on sale but they're a little rough.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-SENTINEL...SwOVpXUyZE

[Image: http://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/T28AAOSwOV...-l1600.jpg]

I was thinking, if I specialized in book radios I could house my entire collection on one or two book cases

Imagine getting "paged" by this fit-for-a-library radio - even though I'm sure it greatly pre-dates the earliest known pagers!

[OldRestorer]

I dont know, Pagers are pretty old

Me

[OldRestorer]

I decided I wanted the "Commander of the Air" cathedral I got from Joe to be playing for Christmas so I dove in yesterday afternoon.... The chassis was so easy looking and the radio was functioning before it was restored. only about 8 caps and 3 single Ecaps. 
  The main issue was all the caps I had to parallel and the resistors I had to put in series. The values were weird in this radio. 2 caps were 1600V, all the Ecaps were 450V and all of the resistors were 5K 50K 500K and all I had were much lower or too high so I tied 2 together for each bad resistor. More than half of them were very high.

  I finished the radio and tester her out. no sound and sizzle and smoke.. I put an eCap in backwards... Oops.. Then I fixed that and then No smoke but no sound.... Trouble shot it and found that if I jumped the pair of resistors off pin 3 of the 227 tube, it came to life... Time to call in help.... I called "someone" and found out I had replaced a 5K resistor with a 50K..   The darn mice chewed off the dot so I mistakenly read the meter wrong....
  Cool right? NO, The volume control/on off pot was crackling horribly... I had to take that apart and put it back together backwards...... 5 times!   I finally got that right and no more scratching.. Unfortunately there was no volume unless it was turned all the way up. After troubleshooting with "someone", it was discovered that the center terminal was bare. never even used so I jumped it to the first terminal and now it works nice...

  I only cleaned the cabinet and she looks fantastic...!

[OldRestorer]

Next victim!
 RCA 121 in non working condition...

I tore her down, replaced all caps, 14 resistors! and a bunch of rubber wiring.
The most tedious part was removing all the wires from the resistor board to get to the caps and resistors on the other side. Thank gosh that there was a layout for me to follow since some of the colored tape markers came off during restoration....
  I finished and the radio came on but no sound
I checked everything but nothing worked, The tubes were good, everything was wired correctly, nothing was in backwards so I was lost.. I decided to test it with a different speaker and boom! sound... I was very upset that the original was bad but when I was removing the alligator clips I got sound from the original speaker!
 It had a loose connection so I fixed that and she works great!
All I need is the one missing knob... The cabinet will be restored in the spring...

                   

[morzh]

Was that just dust or mold also?

[OldRestorer]

Both, Lots of buildup but it began to grow on it's own,

[Radioroslyn]

I finished my RCA but I don't know about the grill cloth...
What do you guys think?

I did a full recap and only had to replace one resistor that was 500K and measured 1.3M! it was 5% tolerance too,, Eek... This was quite an easy restore since the radio was playing so well before.

 I also restored my Zenith 6-S-511 which was a bit harder... We all know about Zeniths cramped chassis and the "touch a wire and the rubber cracks off" so I went ahead and replaced what needed it. The presets were extremely dirty and when you put it on broadcast it would just fizzle.. A gallon of cleaner and filing the points and she is all better.... 

 The one thing I did not do was bypass the 6X5G...
Do you guys think I should do this for safety reasons?
I have done it before and I have it saved that you disconnect the wire to pins 3/5 and the wire to pin 8. Then add a diode and a 150ohm resistor at 5w in series...

Am I off?

Thanks  

I started in on my '511 but it has a lot of bad wiring. Have replaced the paper caps and a bunch of rotted rubber. Working on restuffing the filter cap.

Hey Kirk I'm proud of you! You figured out that filter which is a little confusing as the bottom terminals have two + connected together, one - terminal and outside shell which is the other -. Pretty tricky!!!!!

My parents had a set like this in the kitchen (mid 60's) when I was kid use to listen it for the winter snow reports to hear if I had school that day.

[OldRestorer]

Thanks Terry,

 I tried my hardest not to call for help,

I finished that one so I moved on to my Hallicrafters S-38-A from Joe.
That was a strait forward resto so it only took a few hours.
Next, I was in a Halli mood so I restored the Halli S-38-EB...
Last night I took out my Emerson 140 that was hacked up a bit...
Hopefully I can get her back to original but it is not the easiest job for someone like me....

[Radioroslyn]

I finished my RCA but I don't know about the grill cloth...
What do you guys think?

I did a full recap and only had to replace one resistor that was 500K and measured 1.3M! it was 5% tolerance too,, Eek... This was quite an easy restore since the radio was playing so well before.

 I also restored my Zenith 6-S-511 which was a bit harder... We all know about Zeniths cramped chassis and the "touch a wire and the rubber cracks off" so I went ahead and replaced what needed it. The presets were extremely dirty and when you put it on broadcast it would just fizzle.. A gallon of cleaner and filing the points and she is all better.... 

 The one thing I did not do was bypass the 6X5G...
Do you guys think I should do this for safety reasons?
I have done it before and I have it saved that you disconnect the wire to pins 3/5 and the wire to pin 8. Then add a diode and a 150ohm resistor at 5w in series...

Am I off?

Thanks  

I started in on my '511 but it has a lot of bad wiring. Have replaced the paper caps and a bunch of rotted rubber. Working on restuffing the filter cap.

Hey Kirk I'm proud of you! You figured out that filter which is a little confusing as the bottom terminals have two + connected together, one - terminal and outside shell which is the other -. Pretty tricky!!!!!

My parents had a set like this in the kitchen (mid 60's) when I was kid use to listen it for the winter snow reports to hear if I had school that day.

Got the restuffed can in and set is playing. Like Kirk's set the PB assembly is pretty dirty and the dial is discolored. I've got a parts set somewhere. This set had the wrong knobs and the parts set the knobs badly deformed. I bought a set of repo knobs and buttons but don't really like the color (they are kinda grey instead of tan).

[OldRestorer]

They are greyish but I think they are probably close to what they were when new.
I think they might have been better with an aged color...

Me

[Radioroslyn]

I finished my RCA but I don't know about the grill cloth...
What do you guys think?

I did a full recap and only had to replace one resistor that was 500K and measured 1.3M! it was 5% tolerance too,, Eek... This was quite an easy restore since the radio was playing so well before.

 I also restored my Zenith 6-S-511 which was a bit harder... We all know about Zeniths cramped chassisand the "touch a wire and the rubber cracks off" so I went ahead and replaced what needed it. The presets were extremely dirty and when you put it on broadcast it would just fizzle.. A gallon of cleaner and filing the points and she is all better.... 

 The one thing I did not do was bypass the 6X5G...
Do you guys think I should do this for safety reasons?
I have done it before and I have it saved that you disconnect the wire to pins 3/5 and the wire to pin 8. Then add a diode and a 150ohm resistor at 5w in series...

Am I off?

Thanks  

So did you find the secret panel on the 6S511?????