Raytheon porthole M1105 mousehouse

[Electronic M]

I bought this set from Adam a couple WARCI swapmeets back. Based on the condition and some of the things I had to fix I can see why he sold it.



I believe it is the 1105 model the back says it's the 04 or 05....Strangely enough the sam's for that model does not match mine but another sam's (IIRC 114-10) does match it. There are apparently two chassis versions that were fitted into that cabinet the 3 knob pencil box and ~5 knob pencil box versions which had different front control covers. Mine is a three knob the ETF has the 5 knob. (you can see mine VS theirs in that order below)



The set has had considerable internal rodent damage. Lots of rust, chewed wires, caps peaking coils, and damaged tube sockets, bad transformers, etc. This was one of those resto jobs where "just when you think your out it keeps pulling you back in".



Ever ponder what it would be like to use a live mouse as a stress ball (I'm starting to)? ...Between this set and my Dumont mousehouse I've been lets say a little more annoyed by those varmints than usual.

I started with a recap, and found I had to consult the service lit for 3 caps that had been chewed beyond recognition. upon power up I had 10KV and a nice bright horizontal line. I tried connecting the vert grids to heater voltage and got deflection so I removed the confirmed open vert blocking osc trans and subbed one from a philco split chassis (it was running at half freq, but good enough to check the RF/IF chain). I next went after the IF system, The B+ and heater were arcing and shorting internally in the 4th IF socket and the contacts were corroded to the point of breaking if looked at cross-eyed. I normally try HARD to avoid replacing or disturbing IF/tuner parts, but this socket was DONE. I replaced that IF socket (a resistor that drifted from the arcing and some other passive parts on that socket that crumbled on disassembly) and had to take one of the only good pins from that socket and use it to fix a bad socket pin on the cathode of the 2nd IF...This got me video through it. A replacement audio output trans and socket cleaning got me sound. Now it was time to deal with residual problems The vert heater was intermittent and I had to swap the pin contact from another octal socket to fix it, the chewed open video peaking coils (that I had jumpered) got replaced with ones from the Philco split-chassis parts chassis (as better a better temporary, but worked well enough to stay). I also opened up the original vert osc trans and (crudely) fixed the open, thus getting vert back on freq. And lastly lubed up the continuous tuner mech. It was working great at that point, but still reeked strongly of mice and had some nesting material, and crap left topside so I pulled the CRT and most of the tubes to get the stank off of it. The yoke wiring/plug was hidden by chassis/nest and it was so chewed that I'm lucky it did not short.

After cleaning I powered it up to a dark screen, arcing on IF sockets (from residual cleaner), and no reception. The next day the raster was restored by changing a drifted resistor and flaky osc tube. Reception was still dead. Signal tracing and checks revealed the detector/DC restorer socket had went open in multiple places from the cleaning...Mostly from just removing and reinstalling the tube (yes it was that fragile from corrosion ). I replaced that socket and scraped away an intermittent arcing path on one of the other IF sockets and got reception back. I sorta thought I was done but I did not like that I could not tune my ch13 modulator, and so re aligned the tuner by eye. I prepped the cabinet for the chassis and then noticed one of the tuner slugs fell out and popped it back in, and put the chassis in the cabinet, only to find I had to pull the chassis to readjust the tuner again, and clean a spot I missed inside the safety glass....After that I finally got it done.

The cabinet still needs a shine some minor veneer patching and touch-ups but I'll save most of that for later...

Somehow I half expect my clean 21CT55 is going to be less of a pain in the but than this simpler, but more beat up Raytheon.