Your guess is as good as mine. I bought it this way, except for the smashed tube. That's compliments of the seller/shipper.
In terms of audio, it'll be a long time coming...if ever.

This is a fabulous thread. I restored a 39-25 not too long ago which has many of the same parts and problems. There is no question that I am going to learn some things from this thread and revisit some of my earlier work.
Thanks for the tutorial!

Barry

Barry,
I'm happy to see you here. This entire restoration process (chassis and cabinet) will probably take a minimum of three months, so over what will be more than a few cups of coffee just sit back, relax and let me do the work...and the requisite hair-pulling.
I'm a glutten for punishment.

Every day I look to see if there is a "new episode" on these restoration threads. When there isn't, I'm disappointed just like when there is a rerun of my favorite TV shows.

Been restoring for about 2 years now. I already learned one thing from your post so I look forward to future editions
John, Fairfield OH

Yes, this is absolutely TOP SHELF repair guiding!! I just love to be able to see how and what is going on. And you present this with such a positive method with humour thrown in that it makes it a joy to watch. Thank you so very much!

Gene

This is better than Dexter.

Just saw this......I will be attempting a 42-355 soon so i will be watching closely too!!!! .......Thanks,Greg

John, this is outstanding!

Watching you is better than goin to school. Just the thing for a new guy trying to learn.

Thanks
Frank

Thanks for the positive responses, gents. It's very much appreciated. I'll try hard to keep your interest.

By the way...where's Peter Balazsy? How can I do a proper restoration without my buddy, Peter, here? Speak up, son. Let your presence be known.

Let’s remove the variable capacitor. But before we start, it’s imperative that the aluminum blades be fully meshed. Even one accidentally bent blade is very bad Karma…very bad:


Also be sure to take a pic (or make an accurate drawing) of the dial string pulley position relative to the meshed blades. It’ll make things easier when it comes time to restring:


The dial string pulley is held on by two flat-sided set screws:


A set of curved needle-nose pliers will nicely come to the rescue:


Extra long needle-nose does the rest:


The pulley will then practically jump into your hand:


Now remove the four screws and flat washers holding the capacitor assembly to the mounting bracket:


And remove the three sheet metal screws from the bottom of the bracket:


Three wires need to be unsoldered from the bottom of the assembly. One is a braided ground. The old braid solder will probably be covered by a thick layer of grime. For better heat transfer during desoldering, first spruce it up with a little alcohol:



It also doesn’t hurt to clean up the other wire joints before desoldering. Hey…alcohol is cheap and you should never be in a hurry during a restoration. You heard it here:


It’s possible that during the chassis cleaning procedure one or both of the variable cap wires might make their way down through the hole(s), so I marked which is closest to the outside. When you’re my age anything that helps, helps:


There’s almost no room to desolder the last two wires. I had to twist the assemly this way, then that way, then back to the first way again. It drove me nuts, but I eventually won the contest. (Hint: A pair of sharp dikes can sometimes be your best friend.)
Trust me, before this mess goes back together these two wires will first be lengthened by an inch or so:


Ever see one of these? One end of a short piece of insulated wire is soldered to a mica trimmer cap on one tuning gang. The other end of the wire is simply threaded through a terminal lug hole on the gang next to it. It is not soldered in place.
It’s called a “gimmick capacitor” and believe it or not, it’s necessary for the proper operation of the radio. If you solder the loose end of that wire to the lug a bunch of nasty “white noise” will suddenly pour out of the speaker. Don’t anyone dare to ask how I know that!:


That’s it for now, folks. We’ve created a nearly picked-clean chassis:


As witnessed by the proverbial pile of skeletal remains:


And what I thought was a missing dial needle…has now come home to papa:


By the way…be sure not to lose any of the four variable capacitor mounting ferrels.
Next time we’ll do some chassis cleaning. Hope to see you then:

WOW!! The detail of your photo's is fantastic! I been following and awaiting your progress!! Keep us updated and thanks for taking the time!

I concur! The photography is outstanding; it' what sets your restoration threads apart from the others. Of course there's also the unparalleled problem-solving skills, plain talk explanations, and...have I left anything out?

nice to see your back at it with some old radio's love the pic's to hope you are having fun with the 101 73's kc9kuh

Tomorrow night between 8pm and 8:30pm the ole HW-101 and I will go on the air for the first time. CQ, CQ and all that. I'm looking forward to it.
But right now I'm at work...will be here until 6am in the morning. Everyone else is off for the holidays, so it's just me, the coffee pot, the puter and the ARF.
It don't get no better.

It took me three days (not full time) to replace all of the the rubber-insulated wiring, capacitors, and bad resistors, and re-build the shorted dial lights in my 41-250 with essentially the same chassis. It also had a bad output transformer. The band switch is the most difficult area for the re-wiring.

Here is a link regarding re-building of the dial light sockets:


http://www.philcoradio.com/tech/lamps.htm

Hi John:
The words or text go past the screen on the first page because one of your schematic images is 1024 pixels wide.
Edit that image down to 800 pixels horizontal and everything will fit text wise.

Peter wrote:


Hey, Peter. It's really good to have you here.

I resized that schematic pic. Helped some, but not quite enough, so I went back and plunked in a few carriage returns here and there. Looks a lot better now.

Great pics! It's always good to see a basket-case-looking chassis resuscitated.

But one thing: Measuring a transformer's resistance is only half-way helpful:

(1) If it reads infinity, then that tells you for sure something is wrong.

(2) But if it measures correctly, that's not all that helpful. Most shorts are from turn to adjacent turn, and that 0.2 ohm difference is not going to be measurable. But it will totally mess up the transformer's functioning.

Long ago I accidentally ran a phono amp without a speaker load-- that caused the output transformer to short out internally. It still measured correctly, but the sound was almost completely muffled out.

I think Philco soldered the wires to the tunner then fed the wires thru and connected them under the chassis , Staying tuned , Daniel