neat little Motorola AM/Fm tube

[Hemingray]

Scored this rather cute little Motorola tabletop for $15 today while on the road. Sporting 7 tubes, and a Selenium rectifier, she actually sounds good on original parts (not even any hum!). Interesting to note on this is the sticker on the back from a repair shop,t he tube in the tuner being labeled as "HCC85" (I'm guessing a european version of the 17EW8?(not pictured)), and the three wire cord (third wire is supposedly the "internal antenna")

The only real problem that's plauging it, is the FM tuning is way off (local station 98.3 is coming in around 95, no tuning below 89 at all)

[Sandy G]

I think you can replace the selenium rect. w/a diode-those old seleniums will let go like a cap will, but they will STINK up yr house, & yr neighbor's house...I might think hard about re-capping it, too...THEY'RE prolly not TOO long for this world, either...

[Hemingray]

I intend to do that here in awhile, (I don't want any odd stinks in here anyways, and I am aware of the bad smell of a blown selenium rectifier). It does have the original filter, but shall be replaced for reliability sakes, along with the rectifier. Best part of this is the parts are all board mounted, easy to replace.

Any idea what may be throwing the FM tuning way off like it is?

[Celt]

Front end alignment needs to be tweaked a bit I'd say.

[Randy Bassham]

I have an FM only Motorola set in the same cabinet.

[gadget73]

Normally I'd say its out of alignment, but its vaguely possible (this is a long stretch) that the B+ voltage is low due to the selenium rectifier beginning to fail, which is causing the oscillator to drop out down low. More than likely its an alignment problem but I'd check the B+ just for yucks. I had problems like that with my import sets. When set to 127v on a 125v line voltage, the FM band would drop out below about 95 mhz. I set it to 115v, and it brought the B+ up to spec. No more FM band problems.

[jeffsod]

I too have the B1W FM only version of this nice little radio. I loved the style of it and couldn't resist it. I picked mine on that auction site last summer and its in mint condition. Mine was well taken care of and worked quite well.

In my office I couldn't pick up too many stations so I tried a new HCC85 to see if that would help and alls that did was throw off the alignment which had been very good until that point. Doh!

I haven't done any updates on mine yet but hope to get them done at some point. I suppose this is one radio I might be able to tackle on my own. Getting to its another matter.

Heres what the FM only looks like-

[Celt]

Dang. I like that!

[OvenMaster]

I thought I'd seen that style of dial before! Voila: 1966 Plymouth Fury dashboard!

[Hemingray]

You suppose Motorola got their design idea from Plymouth?

[Hemingray]

Well, set down to work on it tonight, Replaced the three section electrolytic filter and the selenium rectifier, as well as a defective 12BA6 (severe grid leakage) in the FM IF amp. Seems now that it's slightly further off. Anything else I need to look for?

[Randy Bassham]

A '66 Plymouth Fury was what I was driving when we were married in 1971. Huge car with big V-8 and still got 19-21 MPG on the highway at 75-80 mph, what a cruiser.

[jeffsod]

folks had one when I was growing up. What a tank.

[kbmuri]

[gadget73]

Originally Posted by Hemingray

Well, set down to work on it tonight, Replaced the three section electrolytic filter and the selenium rectifier, as well as a defective 12BA6 (severe grid leakage) in the FM IF amp. Seems now that it's slightly further off. Anything else I need to look for?

Probably going to have to align it. It could also have a bad small value cap in the oscillator section, maybe across or in series with the coil thats throwing things off. If its only a few mhz off, you may be able to adjust around it but it is possible for mica caps to fail. Either that, or someone has had the golden screwdriver in there and twiddled with the wrong adjustment sometime in the past.