Buyer told me that the radio (Deforest Crosley Knight) he sold me was recapped. I told him that I would not plug in a radio I had not checked out first. Glad I did not power it up. From the schematics there is a 16 MFD and a 8 MFD cap and turns out the "radio guy" had a 10 MFD cap in place of the 16 and a 22 MFD cap where the 8 should be. The connections were made with stranded wires and strands were touching stuff they should not be. There are a couple of wires where the insulation is crumbling. Gotta stick to your guns guys and assume the "radio guy" before you knew squat.

He obviously mixed up the two replacements.

Imagine if it had more...

I will go thru the full schematic - it is not a complicated circuit.

I have bought fully restored radios which has a new lytic or two and an old one still in use, A couple new caps scattered about, They may even have been some NOS from the 50s, While the radios played I wondered what a fully restored set means in some folks eyes,
As discussed here in the past,
To many folks a restored set means replace what is bad preventing it from playing without hum and that is it,
40K resistors reading 105K and the like through the set, But it plays pretty good.
Meanwhile a fully restored set will play incredibly well.
PS, We like pics.
Peter

funny my brother bought a floor model at his local swap meet as working. nothing worked except maybe the knobs turned. thats what working means in some peoples eyes

I like the ebay titles that read, "Great Condition", only to read farther down that it doesn't "power up". I know they mean the cabinet is is great condition, but still.

My favorite are the ones that state, "it works, but I can't get any stations...Prolly

just needs a tube"

or

an easy fix".

As always "Caveat Emptor" applies. A couple of years back I attended a radio auction. Many of the sets were described as working and the guy selling them, apparently fixed radio's.

W..e..ll. I bought A dual Trace CRO cheap & it took several hours to clean & get the crap off & out of it. I have not yet changed one pot, as I have to modify one to take a yoke. It is also going to be a mongrel to get out of where it is.

I also noted others had been dudded, and several sets needed work. One of the several that ended up on my bench, needed a bit of research, after a cap litterally, fell out of it. It was a bit ovious that this guy tended to repair, and with whatever was handy, rather than refurbish.

Some have had new caps, but they forgot when. I have had sets like a HMV (currently waiting for info before I fire it up) and at least one of the Midwests was about to get its third set of caps. I could tell as the slacker, who did it previously, never cleared the terminals.

Always pays to visually check an unknown set first, I have lost count of how many sets I have worked on, that have had shorts & other major faults when they were checked. Never be afaid to say, No I will not plug it in, even to yourself.

Marc

Welcome to the new age of radio restoration, or as I call it re restoration aka fixing up others mistakes. It's challenging at times. You can do it. Best of luck.

When buying a radio, I first make sure all the tubes are there, and all the wiring is intact. If not original, at least it should appear neat. If tubes are missing I wonder what else is also missing, and generally walk away. If sloppy non-original wiring, walk away. If the guy energetically says the radio is working, then goes out of his way to find a place to plug it in and turn it on, for me that's a very good thing -- it means it should be easy to rebuild. "Working" or "Rebuilt" radios always get an inspection before I put it to use.

What gets me about those types of claim is, it's not as if there wasn't a market for non-working stuff.

I sometime think that some folks just "stretch the truth" (to be polite) as a matter of instinct. Like anything with a box is "new and has never been used".

Basically if it's old, unknown & even in it's original box you still check it. I scored a Leader LSG 11 Sig gen recently. Complete with it's original box, paperwork and a bonus catalogue of what Leader gear they had in 1962. Legally this item was not supposed to be sold with out a "mandatory" statement of electrical safety, which it did not have.

All of its original paper, or whatever they were, caps were asigned to the bin as they failed & the oil types are worse.
Mains wise it was dangerous, with a cap to the case & a two wire cable. That now (per regulations) has a three wire cable and the case is mains grounded.

Marc

Unless you can verify all work was done correctly:
Always assume that a set that was supposedly recapped, isn't.
Assume that a set that supposedly "plays", doesn't.
Asume that a so-called tech that has worked on your set, really isn't a tech.

Sticking to these assumptions, you will never be disappointed.

I would go with the concept of assume nothing: I have been fixing them for decades, & albiet I did start out to do Electrical Engineering, I finished up in Chemistry.

Marc

Excellent; how about conjuring up an elixir to reverse old age...

I bought an RCA K-80 console where the repairer only replaced the paper and electrolytic capacitors. No resistors were touched and probably not even checked as I found out a few years later that one 470K resistor was open and another was reading almost 800K which explains why from day one I could pull one 6F6 and not hear a decrease in volume as its associated driver tube had the bad 470K plate resistor.

There's a cover for every pot. A nice old lady told her ugly daughter that to make her feel better.

Now then, even 20 years ago, we thought little of replacing parts with whatever NOS stuff we had available, because what we had was mostly not more than 20 years old. That was then. Still mountains of VVO NOS parts sitting around no better than those that have served in action. Not saying that anyone deliberately replaced old crap with new crap, but could be.

Best do a redo, start with the filter caps, and for the so few dollars involved, carbon resistors and paper caps once again.

So far I have found a 47mF cap where a 4 mF should be. More is better - right?
The caps that were replaced where just the easy ones.
The caps used were way out of range.
Wires attached but not soldered.
A wire from the center tap of the main transformer with one strand holding - the rest had burnt off...
Don't get me wrong - radios that work are no fun.

Don't know what the previous idiot has done here. What a mess...

Ouch
I avoid "restored" sets.
Turns into a mystery trying to figure out how to make it right again.

Best of luck

Beware of that "Hunts" cap its spelt wrong & their failure rate even those in Transistor radio's is quite high. Had one in a car radio recently that had blown apart.

I can be accused of being pedantic as I have, pointed out several times even this week, that you check resistors as you change caps otherwise you are only doing half a job, in twice the time, as you then have to go back & find the dud /duds, if the thing fails to work, due to a preventable cause.

Marc