Zenith Farm Radio

[Oldsf85]

I just scored a nice zenith 6b164 tube console.
Its a 6volt farm radio from 1937 with 6 tubes.
What would be the best way to power one of these up!
How did they keep the batteries charged for these back then?
I bought this with the intention of restoring it but now that i found its
six volt i may just part it out.

[blue_lateral]

Thats way too cool to part out. If it's not your cup of tea, probably some AKer will want it. In fact, I think someone posted a while back wanting a 'real' farm radio, in other words a radio that runs directly from a car battery, not 1.5v and 90v like you usually see.

They can be converted to ac, and a lot of them were. That could be messy.

On the other hand I dont think buying or building a 6v supply to run this thing on would be cost prohibitive. I wonder how much current it draws? Hmm...

Assuming it has a vibrator power supply, there is a "buffer capacitor" that should be replaced. I don't think there is anything to be gained by bringing the power up slowly like a 120v set. I doubt the vibrator would like it.

I think back in the day you would have more than one battery, and could have got it charged in town. Some people I think had a windmill hooked to a generator. Also some farms had weird power. 37.5v DC I think. It wouldnt have been too hard to cut this back to charge batteries.

Normal recapping probably needs to be done. Congratulations, I think you've found a very unusual beast.

John

[Randy Bassham]

Some folks just took the battery out of the truck and played the radio with it...the trick was to put it back in the truck before you ran it all the way down...unless you lived on a hill. Farm sets are fairly common around here as all the rural areas didn't get electricity until the early 50's.

[dewickt]

Or you pulled the battery out of the tractor to run the radio, with most tractors you had a crank to start it if the battery was dead when you put it back in.
A 6V vibrator radio can be converted to 110V with a 6.3V @10A filiment transformer, jump out the vibrator and feed the radio with AC, the vibrator transformer was made for 100Hz from the vibrator and should work at 60Hz with no problem.