Hi all. I am new to the forum and to the hobby of restoring vintage radios. I am not completely unknowing in the area of electronics but I am not near as knowledgeable as a lot of you are.
Some day maybe .... Anyways, I am in South Central Florida. I have bought a few cheap radios to get going with and most of them end up with the same problem fairly quickly after I get them recapped and checked out and running. It sounds like the symptoms of the silver mica disease. Starts cracking and popping then eventually pretty much goes away. Some times they come back after cooling down then the whole process starts over again. I ordered some silver mica caps for one of them but I have not received them yet.

Any suggestions anyone can give me I greatly appreciate. I already have learned a lot in these Forums.


Bob

I'm guessing you have the IF cans that are 3/4 x 3/4 as these seem to be plagued with the problem you describe. I too have several radios doing the same. One procedure I use is to desolder the offending IF can and place one of the older types (those measuring 1.25 x 1.25) on the side of the chassis using two alligator clips. Then take the 4 wires exiting the can and tac-solder to the circuit as a test. If at fault, the IF can rivet can be drilled out and the internal plates of the capacitors removed and replaced with outboard silver mica's. Alternately, you can drill holes in the chassis to accommodate the older style and larger IF cans by adding a 4-lug terminal strip. This method works well on most RCA AC/DC models since the gap between tube sockets is maintained at 2 inches.