Probably no need to open the vibrator at this stage, as the radio probably has low time on it. However there is one component that will definitely need replacing once you get the vibrator running. That's the Buffer Capacitor. It's connected directly across the secondary of the transformer. Its purpose is to prevent arcing/pitting of the vibtr contacts. Back in the day we always changed the Buffer out of hand with every vibtr replacement. And it's guaranteed to be leaky after decades sitting. Not sure what value yours is, but it'll be rated at 1600V or higher.

Don't open it yet .....

The thing here is, the vibrator may be fine, the fact that your 6V battery became a one volt battery under load means that you weren't providing the radio with the power it needs. Despite what the ratings say I still don't believe a 6V lantern battery could ever provide the "inrush" power needed to start the vibrator. As you may know about incandescent bulb theory, for a couple of milliseconds upon being powered up the cold filament draws MAD amps, way more than you'd ever believe, to heat the filament to white hot where it's resistance goes way UP and the inrush current subsides. With your vibrator, upon initial application of power the stopped contacts that haven't yet started moving are presenting the transformer's primary winding as an almost dead short to your power source , a microsecond or two later once the vibrator starts that initial inrush of current it took to get the vibrator buzzing subsides to the normal running current of the device (which of course is MUCH lower than the starting current).

Old Coot has given you one Hell of a generous offer and I wouldn't be surprised if that battery starts that ol vibrator, if not, only then, provided all the tube heaters and pilot light are on, if it don't start, THEN contemplate taking it apart. As to your fear of hurting something by using the rechargeable battery, remember, the 4A fuse is there to save the day if there are any hard short circuits in the radio.

The buffer cap in my unit (C5) is a .005 MFD 1200 VDC unit.
I do have several 1600 VDC film caps that were for use in TVs and VCRs.

Is the capacitance rating crucial in this application? If not I have a .0082 MFD 1600 VDC Film capacitor that I could use in place of the old .005 MFD 1200 unit.

Agree...the vibrator may be ok, don’t open it yet.

Agree...high inrush current may be the problem, BUT a 6 volt lantern battery that measures 5.5 volts with no load is very tired. Results may be different with a fresh alkaline battery.:scratch2:

Agree... OC’s offer is very generous, big thumbs up for OC. :thmbsp:

jr

I sent old coot a pm but haven't heard back from him yet. I actually paralleled 3 6V lantern batteries together and hooked them up to the radio and turned the radio on and measured the voltage and the voltage was around 5.8V with the radio on and the tubes did light up, but there was no audio and I didn't hear anything from the vibrator.

I did then return the 2 Duracell lantern batteries to the hardware store and got my money back, which I'll use for the battery OC is offering me. :thmbsp:

I have an old 1960s vintage 6/12 V battery charger that was my grandfathers that I can use to recharge the battery that OC is offering me (which I did accept his offer, but I haven't heard back from him yet).

At the point where the paralleled lantern batteries lit the tubes, the next step would have been to give the vibrator a sharp rap on it's side with the handle of a screwdriver and see if that got it to start. Not hard enough to dent it of course, but enough of a hit to hopefully dislodge the possibly stuck contacts. I still wouldn't take it apart till OC's battery arrives, if that much available current don't get it buzzing then yeah it's surgery time.

Ok. Thanks.

It's on its way.

Great, thanks! :thmbsp: I'll be the owner of the radio once I get a couple of radios going for the guy that I've been working on. :D

Just a cautionary note though. If it's a synchronous vibrator (mechanical rectification), be sure the supply polarity is correct. If it's backward, the B+ will also be backwards, throwing reverse polarity on the main filter caps. Whereas with tube rectfication the supply can be either polarity.

I dealt with people like that!
They want the world for the items they have, but want you to repair their stuff for nothing, part and labor.
I quit taking in repairs!

Oh no, he actually pays me for my time and labor as well, but he's bartering with me for some radios and test equipment I needed by allowing me to have an old radio or some old test equipment in exchange for my repair services on some of his old radios, by valuing my repair work time and stuff equal to the value of whatever it is I wanted.

I was able to get an old Knight Model 600 tube tester from him for just what I put into time and parts to fix an old Stromberg Carlson radio and an old Canadian Viking Cathedral Radio (which was mostly research time on the later radio because I couldn't find a service manual for the unit because of it being a Canadian radio, and they have different service information than we do here in the US.)

I also got a really nice variac thrown in as well a superior electric unit.

Ok, well I dont know if this would of affected anything or not but when I was trying to repair the battery cables I which were previously severed and jury rigged back together with wire splices and friction tape I couldn't tell what color the wires were because the cloth insulation on the wires were faded to the point that you couldn't tell what colors they were.

So I wired then up how they were wired up when i first got the radio (which was how it looked in the chassis illustration in the Riders for this unit, not noticing that there was an actual diagram of how the battery cable was supposed to be wired up in the schematic and I accidentally wired up the positive to the negative leads and attempted to power the unit up with a single 6V lantern battery with it wired up that way (which thankfully there wasn't enough juice in that battery to power the unit up) I have since "rectified" (pun intended) the issue.

Hopefully the vibrator and the filter caps didn't get ruined with my failed attempt at powering up the radio with the miswired battery cables.

Interesting little factoid about car radios using synchronous vibrators. You can use a radio from a negative-ground car in a positive-ground car just by reversing the two end leads of the transformer's secondary. This simply inverts the B supply to positive.

This radio uses a positive ground I believe because the A+ wire (the positive wire) is the battery cable's ground shielding cable and the A- wire (the negative wires) are the green and black wires that are inside the ground shielding cable/cloth sheathing.

:thmbsp: The schematic shows A+ as being connected to ground and A- to the switch. Back in the day when 6V cars were the norm a lot of cars were positive ground....

I got the battery today, hooked it up, and still nothing from the vibrator, even after lightly tapping it a couple of times with the handle of a screwdriver.

Time for disection of the vibrator? :scratch2:

Remove the vibrator and connect 6vac to pins 3&6. With AC applied it should vibrate.
There's probably a heavy corrosion buildup on the contacts after so many years. If it doesn't buzz on AC, the coil is probably open.
Trying to remember after so many years.

In PM exchange with Vortalexfan, he indicated that the battery's no-load voltage was 5.4V as received, tho it had been topped up to over 6V before shipment. So I'm wondering if it has developed a bad cell. Told him to withold payment until whether that's determined.

I have a Toyota Prius battery pack with a dead cell. It's a li-ion type battery that should read 7.8 to 8 volts no load. It reads 6.4 volts, so it had to be replaced. There's 28 cell packs in the battery bank.
Lucky thing, the bad cell shorts instead of going O/C, or you'll be calling for a tow.
Slightly OTT, but noteworthy.

Sometimes the contacts in vibrators are so corroded they won't vibrate even at 6V AC...the vibrator in my 47 olds radio needed close to 24VAC from my variac and some light knocking on it to wake it up... it isn't a bad idea to put a 6 or 12V turnsignal bulb in series as a current limiter during the AC wakeup cycle...it can also serve as an indicator if it started working.

OK, Thanks, will give that a try as well.

I've pretty much recapped this whole radio except for 3 capacitors, C12,C13, C16 and C12 and C13 are a part of the vibrator circuit but not sure what their purpose is in the vibrator circuit, they are "in series" with L2 which is the "A" Choke, and C16 is apart of the output tube socket circuit (I think its a cathode bypass cap) and its a .003 MFD Cap and I unfortunately didn't order one because I thought I had one laying around in my cap stash but I didn't.

C12 and C13 are kind of funky caps in that one side of the caps are crimped and soldered to the chassis and the other side are attached to L2 and the Vibrator socket, but I'm not sure if those caps should be replaced and if so how to go about replacing them.

C16 on the other hand I was wondering how critical the value of that part is because I do have some .001 MFD caps which if I could put one of those in that spot I might do that instead until I can make another order.

Well a little update on the vibrator, unfortunately I think this vibrator is toast, I tried powering it up with a Variac in order to put 6 VAC on it, and its not doing anything, I even tried putting 24 VAC on it like Electronic M suggested and it just won't do anyrhing, and the weird thing is that there isn't any corrosion on the contacts (yes I did open it up) just a lot of carbon dust from the contacts arcing against each over the years but no corrosion.

I may have to get another vibrator online over on ebay, unless someone on here has a 6V Positive Ground 6-pin Vibrator they could donate to the cause. :scratch2:

Would this Vibrator Work in my radio?

See Link below.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/VINTAGE-MAL...QAAOSwBnVW-cOt

Bump!

Anyone here have any information for my latest issues?

I don't think that is the right vibrator, and here's why I think that;

The Ebay Vibrator has it's two fat pins opposite of each other, and the not too well drawn schematic on Nostalgia Air looks like the two fat pins are right next to each other. If I am correct, the Ebay vibrator won't fit into your radio's socket.....

I figured as much but had to check, they didn't have too much in the way of old 6V 6 Pin vibrators on ebay unfortunately, and the Solid State replacements over at AES are 4 pin units which means they wouldn't work either, so its looking like I may not be able to successfully resurrect this radio, especially if I can't find the correct replacement vibrator for this radio...:sigh:

You can use the solid state vibrator but you have to change the socket to a four pin and wire in two diodes for rectification.
I did that for a 1940 Cadillac radio which originally used a synchronous vibrator.

Ok, I'll give that a try. :thmbsp:

If it were mine to do, this is how I'd do it;

I would not change the radio to adapt a different vibrator, I'd adapt the different vibrator to work with the radio's original socket. The Ebay vibrator is electrically what you need, it's just got the wrong pin configuration. It would be a simple matter to use the original base with it's pins from your dead vibrator to build a home made adapter to make the Ebay vibrator work. With the nostalgia air schematic you've already got the electrical pinout of your original. Somewhere out here in internetland there's gotta be a datasheet where you can get the pinout of the Ebay vibrator. Solder six wires to the new vibrator's pins, connect them in the proper order to the six pins of your original vibrator's base, epoxy it into a small piece of PVC pipe for sturdiness, and run it.... :thmbsp:

I might give that a try as well.

A little update:

I found two listings on ebay from the same person that has the correct type of vibrator for sale that I need for my radio!

The Radiart Type 5411 Vibrator.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/29405504020...oAAOSwvlVgR~7m

https://www.ebay.com/itm/29405497859...YAAOSwpKJgR~HE

UPDATE: I managed to snag one of those Radiart type 5411 Vibrators that I posted the links to in the previous post.

They should be here by next week hopefully. :thmbsp:

:) That is awesome news! I'm happy to hear that you won't have to try to kludge something in....

Thanks! Yes, I too am happy I won't have to modify this radio at all to make it work hopefully.:thmbsp:

A Little update, I got my Vibrator yesterday, and I put it into the radio and hooked the battery up to it, turned on the radio and the tubes glowed and the pilot light came on but still no audio and it didn't seem like vibrator was doing anything still.

I've completely recapped this radio (except for the capacitor attached to the volume control that is used for tone compensation), and I tried hooking the vibrator up to my variac and running it with 6V AC and all the way up to 24V AC and the Vibrator is not wanting to respond I was even trying to gently tap the vibrator housing to see if I could get it to start that way, and nothing.

So a couple of questions, how common is it for these Vibrators to be Dead, including NOS ones, and do these vibrators actually make an audible humming noise when they are running properly?

I just seem to keep hitting roadblocks with this radio and I really want to get this radio working because its a really neat radio.

Of the 2 vibrators I have had my hands on both were DOA and had to be brought back to life. They do make an audible buzz in opperation.
It took like 10 minutes of cranking the voltage up for brief 1 second spurts (once or twice I hit 60 on the variac), letting it sit at 12-24V for 5-10 sec and banging it on the table not quite hard enough to dent mine to revive it...

OK, well I guess I'll have to see what I can do with mine, although I don't really trust myself with a "cheater cord" hooked up to a vibrator with aligator clips and plugged into a live variac and trying to bang the vibrator against my workbench table and not accidentally have an aligator clip fly off and short against something... :yikes:

Use a 60 watt lamp in series with the coil, then type getting it to vibrate.
The foam rubber lining was a tendency to react with the contacts, even on a brand new unit.
Open up the can on the original vibrator and see what can be done with it.

We haven't heard anything regarding getting this set going.
Did the replacement vibrator do the trick.