10-11-2014, 11:45 PM
Mondial Wrote:Nick, next time to make removing the insides from the electrolytics easier, heat the can with a heat gun. This will melt the tar and the insides will just slide right out.
morzh Wrote:I have an old wine cork screw, I screw it inside the cap stuffing, heat it with a heatgun, and then pull. The more you heat it the easier it is, just to hold it you might need a glove.
The corskscrew idea is neat. Although just the thought of heating it gives me flash backs of hot melted tar all over the first time I tried to restuff a bakelite block. My own fault for letting it get too hot. Since then, I found it's generally just as easy and less mess to chisel out the tar on the blocks using a small jewelers screwdriver. I can just vacuum up the solid chunks with my shop vac and clean out the remainder in the block with q-tips and thinner.
Well I think I now have all of the caps and resistors in the IF, power, and rear/audio sections replaced. I almost forgot about that capacitor pack on the top side in the IF section. I took that off and pulled the pack out of the can. I was able to remove the original wires fairly easily. In the past with these capacitor packs, I often put them on a small PCB. But this one was a pretty straightforward series connection, with a couple taps in between caps. So I found i could lay them all side by side, zip tie them together, solder the leads together, and then reattach the original wires to them.
I then took the whole thing, wrapped it up in parchment paper (I figure that makes a decent insulator, considering is coated with silicone) folded the back end up and taped it to make a pouch, and slid it back in the can. The original pack had a ground wire soldered to the side of the can. But It only grounds through 2 litttle spring clips, and I'm not sure how much I trust that. So I ran a ground wire from the new pack I made out under the chassis and soldered it to a ground lug on a near by bakelite block.
The parts in the rear/audio section took me a bit longer than I anticipated. They shoved a fair amount of crap back there, and there was also a loom of wires laying right over everything. I couldn't take pictures to work off, because it was so cramped and I couldn't get a good angle. So I had to draw out my own little diagram and tracing what went where before even starting to work. Putting the new caps in was a little easier given their smaller size.
Tomorrow I have some things i need to do inthe morning, then sit down and watch the Packer game. Tomorrow afternoon/evening I'll take the rest of the "tower" off the front, so I can work on getting the RF chassis out to work on. Just the thought of that section is making me nervous. I was second guessing my work on the audio section as it is. That RF section looks like an even bigger mess.