Predicta Holiday restoration

[marty59]

Looks like a clean non-smoker chassis at least. The wires on my Predicta are a sticky, fragile mess that I contend with. That filament resistor is just horrible as mine was opened up/burnt at one spot as well as the leads being all covered with that green corrosion....

Those 12CA5 audio output tubes like to run hot and ruin sockets as you know!

[bandersen]

Originally Posted by marty59

Looks like a clean non-smoker chassis at least. The wires on my Predicta are a sticky, fragile mess that I contend with. That filament resistor is just horrible as mine was opened up/burnt at one spot as well as the leads being all covered with that green corrosion....

Those 12CA5 audio output tubes like to run hot and ruin sockets as you know!

The wires in this set were pretty sticky too. I cleaned them off with lacquer thinner as best I could. I wonder why they used a mix of cloth and plastic insulated wires

The nasty old filament resistor has been replaced These silicone coated Dale power resistors should hold up for a long time.

[Kevin Kuehn]

Originally Posted by bandersen

I wonder why they used a mix of cloth and plastic insulated wires

Philco parts buyers probably found a deal on some NOS, or it was left over from an older model run. I really doubt they were worried about authenticity at the time.

[Don Lindsly]

Vendor components usually have plastic insulation. Philco parts and chassis wiring is usually cloth covered wire. Manufacturing Engineering called out the colors and sizes according to Philco practices.

Production wiring was cut and tinned weeks in advance by machine and placed on the line at the position where it was to be used. No one would have wasted time separating wires hoping to find some unused lengths for use on another product. Even tubes and parts that dropped on the floor were not salvaged. They were continuously swept up and discarded.

At the end of a production run, unused material was discarded by the ton.

Don

[Kevin Kuehn]

Thanks, Don. Pretty interesting to hear it from someone that experienced how it all played out. Sort of like having our own Philco time machine here on VK.