Quote:
Originally Posted by Sandy G
Mine has a noisy clark & AA5. Different model though. Funny how these leetle things often don't "get it" that they're cheap-shite junk & shoulda quit workin' YEARS ago...
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There is a way to silence that noisy clark -- er, clock (now ya' got
me doing it
) in your Zenith radio. I read about this technique in an old radio repair book. There is a round gearbox that fits in a hole at the bottom of the clock, near the gear drive for the hands; the gearbox itself has a tiny gear that meshes with another to drive the rest of the mechanism, IIRC. Take this gearbox out and put it on top of a 100-watt light bulb. Let it set, with the bulb on, for a couple of hours, then remove the gearbox (carefully; it will be hotter than the dickens) and place a drop or two of light machine oil on the tiny drive gear. As the gearbox cools, the oil will be drawn into it. Reinstall the gearbox and your clock should be good to go, noise-free, for the next 30 years.
"Cheap-s*** junk"? Sandy, are we talking about the same Zenith? I honestly don't believe that the Zenith Radio Corporation of Chicago ever used anything other than top-quality parts (including clocks) in its radios. I once had a Zenith L516W clock radio (AM only) in which the clock was always whisper-quiet, and the radio was a fine performer as well. I foolishly stripped the chassis and clock out of the cabinet years later (long before I ever had a computer or heard of AK), and used the speaker and cabinet with one of my amateur radio sets. The only parts I saved from that radio, IIRC after all these years (!), were the tubes, which wound up in my junk box.
I didn't realize, until I read the posts in this thread, that the L516W Zenith radio was available as an AM/FM set as well as AM only. The AM/FM version must be quite rare, as I see the AM version on eBay once in a while, but I have yet to see the other one either there or on Craigslist. I wonder if the AM/FM L516W Zenith is as rare as the Zenith J420T (1952), which was a two-band (AM broadcast and shortwave) four-tube battery-powered version of the company's H511 AA5 (broadcast only), from 1951.
The J420T doesn't show up often (in fact, very rarely) on eBay (I've only seen one such set there), and I haven't yet seen one on CL. I wonder if these sets were snapped up by collectors or--
gasp!--trashed years ago.