Quote:
Originally Posted by Electronic M
+1
Hundreds of feet of wire in a table radio?...Lol come on, seriously?
Those block caps are easy...With the right screw driver I can chip the guts out without heat in under a minute.
Most block cap era Philcos I only use the schematic to determine the pin-out of the ant and osc coils*. Just change the lytics, re-stuff the block caps using one of the internet references to determine their contents/pinout and if the ant and osc coils are good the chassis should work. Often the single layer ant and or osc coils are open (2 of 3 60 chassis I've serviced, and 2 of 2 80 chassis were open)...Often the break is near an end so deleting the corroded turn or two and reconnecting the end will fix it, but I've had some where the whole winding was full of opens....Those I just count the turns, remove the old and rewind the same number of turns with Radio Shack phono pickup wire (always works like a charm  ). |
I talked to an old-time radio repairman, who had just finished a mid-30's Philco radio. I inquired if he replaced the bakelite block caps, He replied, that they never went bad.
I read, that they were "vacuum impregnated", so they did have a long life, but after 80+ years???
I use my $8.88 Harbor Freight heat gun and heat them a bit and the guts pop right out, with little effort.