I found my next victim today. Picked it up for $25 from an antique shop 5 minutes down the road. Got it down from $50. Anyway, I took it home and cleaned the cabinet with gojo and #0000 steel wool. It cleaned up a bit, but a lot of the lacquer is gone, especially around the grill frame. There's a fracture on the right side, near the curve. I'm not sure how to go about fixing that, but right now I'm not worried about it.
I'm going to continue to update this thread with my questions instead of bombarding the forum with questions relating to the same radio. I hope this thread will keep things organized and help other newcomers learn some tips along the way.

Stay tuned, here we go......

Here's the radio itself after a light gojo cleaning. The top and sides are much nicer than the front, trust me



Here's the back view. A little rusty, dusty, the usual I guess. This is my first radio that is not very cosmetically clean. But I'm sure I can fix it up. I like that all of the stickers are pretty much intact. The bottom ply's are coming apart as you can see. I'll do like Bret Menassa and shim some wood glue in there, clamp, and let dry. I hacked the cord off, if you could even call it that. There was nothing left of it. The dial cord is all screwed up. I need to find a restringing diagram. I don't see a rubber friction wheel that one of you guys had mentioned on Bobwilson's thread?



Took the chassis out of the cabinet. Flipped it over and this is what I found. A mouse house. I'm guessing the rust was from mouse urine? I didn't find anything cool, like a diamond ring but I found a peanut shell and a craft feather in that pink blob. Oh and of course mouse droppings. I held a kitchen towel over my mouth as I pulled all of that out with my moms kitchen tongs ( they're mine now). Then I vacuumed all the little pieces out. Doesn't seem to be anything odd underneath, no rust really. Pretty clean thank god.



Once all of that got cleaned out, here's what I'm left with. I'm so glad to see that things look relatively original under there. Except for that Emerson cap. What I do find odd is that in this radio, the caps are different than Bobwilson1977's (http://www.antiqueradios.com/forums/vie ... 6&t=182353) RCA. Also it seems as though he has an original electrolytic under there, mine doesn't seem to have that. Also, if you look in the bottom left corner the terminal, there's no jumped, but it seems on Bobwilson's there's a jumper....Not sure if mines original and complete or not, I see some discrepancies. Hopefully all is OK. As far as the rubber wiring, I also don't see much of that, interesting.......



I took the tubes out and cleaned them. I can't believe how easily the numbers printed on the tubes can wipe off. Newbies beware. I didn't wipe any numbers off completely, but they are faint now. I'm glad to see an original RCA eye tube. This is the first radio I got with one, I hope it's a nice bright green when working. I'm excited about that. The metal ones are a bit rusty. It's an 8 tube set.



I taped off the socket holes so I can freely scrub the chassis without getting any gunk down in there. My first radio I used steel wool and didn't tape the sockets off. NOT A GOOD IDEA. I'm still not comfortable using steel wool. What other abrasive can I use to clean this chassis up. It's pretty cruddy and I'm assuming naval jelly for the rust?



Okay that's all for today. Time to regroup myself, my winter break is just about over. You won't hear from me as much during the weekdays now. But I'll be in and out each night.

P.S. I'm excited to see that this schematic appears to have a "for dummies" parts schematic below the real schematic that tells me caps and resistors are tied to. Also the pins are number on this one, which is refreshing because my Firestone schematic didn't have that amenity. I have the schematic posted in my signature for future reference.

Looking forward to your progress, and, please close the tuner, there are already bent fins on it.

Good Lord - those pesky little varmints!!! Little stinkers found that one hole, in the front of the chassis, no less!

Looks like a fun project, and nice job getting the price down as you did - looking forward to following your progress...

You are taking on a good task there, Take the time to look closely at each and every wire, The mice tend to move things around a bit so they can really pack insulation in there, They will also chew wires at the ends to remove them from the chosen path,
I personally would pop some new Lytics in there and power it up and see if I can make it play before spending time on scrubbing the chassis,
I must of had about a dozen jumpers on this chassis before getting to to play after removing the mouse house,
Now it is a real good player,
Looks like crap, But plays like the dickens.
I've only been doing this for about 3 years and I will now always try to make them play before spending time working on the cosmetics.
But that is just me.
Here's the mouse house from this past fall.

After seeing how some people (sellers)have shipped radios from some of the posts on here.(sadly), I think we should hire the mice to pack the radios!

God! That is the biggest one I've seen yet! There had to be at least one mummified leftover in there, right?!

You guys should start a thread entitled "My mouse-house is bigger than yours".

Mice love to chew modern wire insulation too - the silicone in it is what they desire, as I understand. And that's why when mice get into a stored vehicle that often it ends up as a totaled basket-case because they chew the insulation off of the chassis wire bundles, and all the wires short-together.

Looks like it should clean up nicely. I'm wondering if all those bare wires are courtesy of the mice? Seems unlikely to have originally had bare wires strung clear across the chassis.

Curtis Eickerman

Some of those yellow wires up against the top of the chassis look to be rubber-covered the same as some I have replaced. Just touch them and they crumble. Agree with Curtis that all those long bare wires were once yellow rubber-covered also. No way would RCA run long bare wires like that.

Don't use steel wool around a radio chassis at all: it will cause shorts and can get into speaker voice coil gaps. It has its place in cabinet refinishing. For scrubbing rusty spots you can use various Scotch-Brite pads. Naval Jelly is OK for rust but contain it from running all over and wipe down with plenty of damp paper towels afterwards. Old toothbrushes -- go get yourself a new one (or use your brother's!) -- are good for scrubbing around on chassis.

Boy you are brave to take on those real bad ones . I used to myself . Your picture of the front shows very well how that go-jo hand cleaner works . I can see , not real good . If you switch to Westleys tire cleaner you will notice a huge improvement in how it cleans , your choice . I have had a couple of that radio and they are real good preformers when they work right . If i remember right the manual tuning is strange where you have to push in on the tuning knob to engage it . The bottom looks suprizingly good after the mice .

When i clean a chassis like that i do not use steel wool . First thing i use is a regular 3/4'' with chisel with a nice smooth dull end . It will scrape off all the crud real nice & easy down to the metal . If it starts to dig it then your end is to sharp . After that i use the westleys cleaner on rags . At any rate its way to much fun

God! That is the biggest one I've seen yet! There had to be at least one mummified leftover in there, right?!


Yuppers, Here he is,

Hi all, thanks for the replies.
Today for the heck of it I picked up some naval jelly and applied it to the rust patches, it's shrinking the patches, but taking a very long time. But hey, patience is a virtue I suppose.

I agree with your suggestions of popping in some lytics and powering it up before I spend days cleaning the chassis. I'll work on the chassis while I'm waiting for the new lytics.

This parts list is a bit funky, with parts omitted, parts added, here and there. I'm going to order the whole right side of the parts list just to be safe. Whatever I don't use will just go into my parts collection (which I'm happy to add to), If anyone wants to check out the documentation (in my signature) maybe you can help clarify what's going on here.

I tried to take an inventory of what caps are in there now, but a few of them are conveniently barely labeled and buried (I find it comical that there's a huge gap of free space, and they put 20 parts in one corner.......

Here's what I'll be purchasing in the next night or so. I'm predominately concerned about the lytics because I want to get them in and power this puppy up.

My question tonight to get cleared up is this:

I'm not going to restuff the lytic can up top. I'm going to bypass it underneath. I gave it my best shot at reading the schematic. Please double check me here, I hope I have at least some of it correct. Here goes nothing.

C16 - 10mfd 450v - Negative lead to chassis ground, positive lead to pin 4 of 6SA7 (1st Detector) Question: Is there another place I can put the negative lead that's equivalent to chassis ground OTHER than literally grounded to the chassis?



C27 - 20mfd 25v - Negative lead to chassis ground or preferably pin 1 of 6F6-G (5), positive lead to pin 8 of 6F6-G (5).



C31 - Negative lead to chassis ground or preferably pin 1 of 5Y3 rectifier, positive lead to pin 2 of 5Y3 rectifier.



C30 - Negative lead to chassis ground, positive lead to pin 4 of 6F6-G (6).



That's my best guess on where these new lytics should go........

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Okay, that's all for tonight. Back to school tomorrow. I'll check back tomorrow night. Later.

Attachments:

mouse1.jpg [ 67.05 KiB | Viewed 55 times ]

Zenith...the Royalty of Rats Nests

Hi,
As you can see, we all get one of these once in a while. This set I picked up for a few dollars, a Silvertone 4485
It's funny that the mice don't chew on the coils, as far as I know. They chewed thru the insulation, even eaten parts of the capacitors and left bare wires on my Silvertone set. No coil damage at all!

As you can see the mice had quite a hoarde in there, lots of nutshells and seeds.



The cabinet was in great shape, and the chassis came out beautiful.
Good luck with your T80 project. I have a T-65 which looks the same as yours, on the shelf waiting to be redone.

unless you dont want any lettering on your tubes clean around the lettering. never use metal wool anywhere near any kind of electronic or electrical equipment. before asking where they go trace the components where they now go. then you will know chassis ground from earth ground on your radio. symbols are used interchangably depending on who drew the diagram

Right now I'm trying to test my schematic reading skills. Let's pretend everything coming out of the can is chopped...Are my examinations correct, if not, an explanation would be great. Thanks though. Will check back later.

P.S. -- Where's a good place to get dial cord and capacitors and resistors? I hate to pay shipping for two different places for small parts like these...

Did those mice chow down on your speaker cone too?

I thought I saw some daylight between the speaker basket.

Hope its not too bad.

Curtis--
The bare wires are original--mine was the same way and other pictures of this chassis that I've seen had bare wires connecting the trimmers to the coil.

Ed. G

Who wudda thunk it Thanks, Ed.

Curtis Eickerman

Good chuckles on the mouse issues So pred, we gotta' know - did you chase the wife around the house for a while with that carcass?!

RP - I concur that your notes above all appear to be correct. The only thing I'll caution you about is indiscriminately moving the components around differently than the manufacturer laid them out, and that includes lead lengths. These things got built piece by piece, then they were aligned. Perhaps go slowly, a part or two at a time, and testing in-between? Believe me, you don't want to change out 10 caps and whatever else, only to power it up and wonder where the potential new problem is located out of all those changes.

Best way i've found to ground the new e-caps is to use the same ground the old one used.Since the + end of the old one is disconected it dosen't hurt anything.

Nick