[Reece]

Phew, yard work all day, mowed, trimmed, blower, went and bought and planted a few tomato, pepper, and eggplant plants, dug out some weeds along a fence, and am now cleaned up and collapsing in front of the magic television/typewriter.

Rollei35guy, I killed the radio snakes, too. No longer required. I've got something to say about that, too: the snakes were on the power cord leads. Notice that the self-grommeted hole for the power cord is right back of the first audio tube, one of the most sensitive spots for hum pickup. When I put my new power cord on, I used a UL knot inside the rear chassis apron and then twisted the two leads and routed them around the side of the chassis passing the 35L6 and the 35Z5 until reaching the switch and the terminal on the rectifier. You want to keep your AC power wiring away from audio inputs. The cord I used was polarized so I put the hot lead on the switch.

marty59, yeah, it's really tight working in there. I took plenty of pictures and made myself sketches. I have another radio, an RCA 28T, almost finished, that was full of crumbling yellow rubber wiring. I had to replace 99% of that and some was in really tight places. Big 8-tube table set with push-pull audio. Had to unfasten a scary-looking unobtainable-if-you-screw-it-up shortwave coil and swing it out of the way at one point. Work around a multi-gang band switch sweatin' coconuts.

On this Firestone, there is a 3-gang tuning cap, just not visible in my picture. The first tube in line is a 12SK7 and it's the RF amp. It's only used for the broadcast band, however; is out of the circuit for short wave.

Jeffhs, some of the wet electrolytics from the '30's if they haven't been abused by a short somewhere, or if they haven't dried out, may still work OK. Ditto some of the big paper caps used in the late '20's for filters before electrolytics became more common/cheaper. I've heard it was because of the good paper they used. Supposedly later on, the paper used was prone to deteriorate.

However, wax dipped paper caps and of course the infamous black beauties eventually become leaky. The thought was that wax was impervious to moisture: it isn't. But the ceramics that Zenith liked to use fifty years ago, and orange dips when they came along and "yellas" that we use a lot now should be a lot more reliable than the old wax firecrackers. No paper in 'em.

All that being said, it's a crap shoot as to when a paper or electrolytic cap that has been playing merrily along decides to die. I've had them do that right in front of me and maybe some of you guys have, too. Was playing one chassis while working on another and the working set all of a sudden sputtered and maxed out on hum and I yanked the cord. Paper cap underneath had puked its waxy little guts out. Once had an electrolytic pop, too, and hum went right up to the top. It's best to replace them.

If there's room on top of the chassis to somehow cut the filter can open and scoop out the guts, you could restuff it with new caps. You can't solder to the terminals that come up through the phenolic wafer, though; they're aluminum. You have to drill a hole or holes in the wafer and run your wires down and solder them to the terminals underneath, which are normal tinned terminals staked to the aluminum stubs. It would probably be easier, which is what I do when possible, to mount a terminal strip under the chassis and put the new electrolytics there, leaving the old can in place for looks. The terminal strip doesn't have to be right by the old can if there's no room there.