I Replaced the tuning eye in an old silvertone 4586 and the eye lights up great, but won't move. What could be causing ghis? It was missing the eye when I bought it and the radio wrks great otherwise

The most common cause of zero eye movement is a particulator resistor that has gone open circuit.

The resistor is located in the eye tube socket and for your radio should measure 1.1 megOhms.
Check for continuity between pins 2 and 4 of the socket.
If the resistor measures open circuit there will be no movement of the green area.

http://www.nostalgiaair.org/Resources/120/M0017120.htm

I had the same problem with a set I worked on. I never got chance to fix it, but with my research on this website, I learned that there is usually a resistor that needs replaced. On some units this might be hidden within the magic eye tube socket as already mentioned. You can use the search tool in this website and look for something like 'tuning eye resistor' or 'magic eye resistor' to learn more. Maybe someone else will chime in with more info.
Good Luck, tuning eyes are pretty cool in my book!
-Dennis

Dale pretty much nailed it. The 1 meg resistor hidden in the tube socket has probably opened.

Pete

Is this resistor challenging to replace?

if you can open the socket easily it will be easy to get to. Often they aren't easy to open, but if the resistor is open, one guy I know inserts each lead of the new resistor into the socket pins noted and pushes the tube back in. That holds it in. That seems to work if you can't open the socket. He swears by it.

I haven't done it myself so I can't confirm that it works.

That resistor is a common problem, if it has the correct value you need to dig a little further in the AVC circuit which provides the voltage change to actually close the eye. Have you replaced caps? The AVC line goes from the AVC Plate to the front end of the radio. Notice it goes to the grid of the eye tube. Critical issues are R 16 and 17 and C 11. The radio can work with this not functioning properly but no eye tube movement and no gain change on the radio as you move from strong stations to weak ones to level out the volume.
Jerry

Schematic here.

http://www.nostalgiaair.org/PagesByMode ... 017120.pdf

If you have a 1 meg handy just wrap the leads around pins 2 and 4 and try it out.
Phil

here was my situation:

http://www.antiqueradios.com/forums/vie ... 6&t=227117

steve

Just do what Dale suggested first and measure the socket between appropriate pins to confirm the resistor has gone very high. If bad, the resistor wrap is a great idea. Opening the socket can lead to some terrible problems.
Jerry

Won't know till you take a closer look at the socket. There is more than one way that is was done.

I've fixed two amd neither one was too difficult but they were very different from one another.

One was a bakelite socket with the wafer in the bottom under the tube. Maybe I got lucky but the wafer popped right out and it was easy to remove the old resistor and replace. The second one had a metal socket that had an upper section crimped over the lower section and wasn't hard to seperate to access the resistor.

Randy

Let us not go into the socket until we have determine if the resistor is bad. Often yes but there can be other problems. Measure the dang resistor before tearing things apart.
Jerry

Of course, we still don't know if caps have been replaced and resistors checked. It may work well now but......
Jerry

I haven't gotten a chance to measure the resistor yet, but I know most of the caps are original, not been replaced. How do I know which pin is which? And do I have the radio on when checking? (Sorry for the stupid questions, I am new to this stuff)

See the second post on this thread from Dale. Unplug the tube and the radio and measure the pin to pin on the socket. I'm not certain of the tube base on that tube but if it is octal with a center guide pin to orient it, looking at the tube base, from the index on the center pin you will count counter clock wise. If not that type someone more familiar than me can direct you based on the tube pins size. You really do need to do some replacement caps on this radio. It is getting way past their useful lives and the failure can be costly.
Jerry

Edit: Here is a link to your tube. It is not octal, notice that it shows "large" pins for the filaments. This view is from the bottom of the tube, your view from the tube socket side need to reverse direction in counting.

http://frank.pocnet.net/sheets/021/6/6G5.pdf

I can't seem to find these capacitors-
.1 MFD, 300 Volt
.0025 MFD 750 Volt
.25 MFD, 200 VOLT
.05 MFD, 200 volt
If anybody knows where to find thesE, let me know. Ioozed on justradios, and they did not hAve these values or onew close to these. Checked many other sites as well. Please help!

The easiest answer is to go up in voltage (there is no penalty....)

We routinely use 630-volt parts for just about everything----when that's not enough, then 1000-volt

A comfortable margin is 50%---e.g. if the actual voltage is 400, then use a part rated for at least 600.

Sal (ad at the right) has all the 630-volt values. Justradios has these + the higher voltages: http://www.justradios.com/cart.html

Something to add. Some have been replaced by modern values. .05 mf is now .047 mf. .25 mf is now .22 mf. You may still find caps with older values but all have tolerance. A cap marked .05 could be + or - 20%. If so actual value may be anywhere from .04 to .05 mf.

touché...

AND--if the schematic says 0.1 uF, the set might work OK using anywhere from 0.05 to 0.2 (or even higher)

99% of the time, you can use the closest value that is readily available

.1 µF at 400 V http://www.mouser.com/Passive-Component ... f1Z1z0x6fv
.0025 µF at 1 KV http://www.mouser.com/Passive-Component ... vtZ1yyirz7
.25 µF at 250 V http://www.mouser.com/Passive-Component ... 0jZ1z0x4ln
.05 µF at 500 V http://www.mouser.com/Passive-Component ... ezZ1yzmjqf

Acceptable alternatives at rated voltages or higher. There may be other options as well (slightly different values, etc.).

Go to this page and select the value you want and then see what voltages are available.

http://www.mouser.com/Passive-Component ... /_/N-5g7r/

The .25 part above kept giving me 125 V parts even though the search was set for 250. I didn't understand it, but even though they say 125 V, they are actually 250 VDC rated.

Curtis Eickerman