#Antique transistor radio install
#Antique transistor radio free

to the right of the speaker you see the tuning capacitor. alignment is beyond the scope of this instructable.

don't mess with those! you will cause yourself unnecessary headaches as the radio will then not only require whatever repairs needed to be made but also an alignment. those are RF (radio frequency) transformers. in the pic you will see several aluminum rectangular objects with pointed tops and tape over them. these early transistor lunchbox sized radios often used similar parts to their vacuum tube predecessors. just below it there are two cardboard covered cylinders, those are capacitors. in the pic you see the back of the chassis, the radio is upside down. if they need replacing, you will be able to get to them now that the radio is opened up. their are two light bulbs located behind the 'eight transistor' sign that light the dial from the bottom up. with the radio on, push the white 'lite' button next to the volume control. since your radio is powered up go ahead and check the dial lamps. to a non geek, this radio is busted and thus sold for cheap on ebay.

#Antique transistor radio install

the battery box was all corroded so there was no contact being made when somebody tried to install fresh batteries in it. turns out my radio got laid up not because it had a circuit issue, it was because of the battery leakage. the old caps probably needed to come to life before the juice once again flowed. it took about 30 seconds but then the radio came to life. i set my power supply for 6vdc and powered up. almost all antique AM transistor radios will work on voltages a few volts lower than they were designed for. how many cells did this radio originally use? it used (6) 1.5v batteries. as we saw earlier, red is + and green is - on the battery compartment leads. if you have a variable DC supply, this is a good chance to see if your radio works at all. once you gain experience, you'll know which way to support the chassis so nothing is damaged. it's best to lay the radio on a towel folded over as a cushion until you learn to recognize what's delicate in these old radios.

#Antique transistor radio free

in pic 4 you see the chassis free and clear to work on. you will need to de-solder the battery compartment wires to liberate the back cover from the chassis. the green is negative and the red is postive and labeled as such on the battery compartment terminals if you look closely to where they are soldered (pic 3 shows them already de-soldered). the back cover will come off but be careful as it will be connected to the radio chassis via two wires. flip it over and you will see two philips head screws that hold the back cover on (pic 1), remove them (pic 2). some repairs can actually take away from the collector value. it's important to asses whether you want to restore or just repair. i wanted to get it working and useable again. i wanted one i could take outdoors with me and not be too worried about it getting scuffed or bumped around in the car. 1) the chrome is pitted in some places 2) the knobs are incorrect, these look like they came off a 70's era ford automobile 3) the battery compartment had extensive battery acid damage (a common problem with old radios) 4) the battery door had a broken latch (another common flaw on this model) restore or repair? considering the price paid and the flaws, i decided to repair this radio back to operating condition. this radio came with the following issues. a little work brings most old transistor radios back to life. it had some cosmetic issues and was deemed as broken by the seller. I had been hunting one of these for a while and snagged one on ebay for what i considered to be a very fair price.