One of the members of the ARCH radio club in St. Louis gave me this radio to repair. The most exciting part was that it was completely disassembled when I received it. For some reason it didn't occur to me to take lots of "before" pictures, but I do have some from while I was working on the radio. I first replaced all of the paper "bumblebee" capacitors that by now are electrically leaky. I also replaced the selenium rectifier since they have a reputation for failing catastrophically. I discovered that the ballast tube and the 1L6 were both dead, but the guy who gave me the radio was kind enough to include a set of new tubes for it, so replacing those wasn't a big deal. While I was testing the radio during the repair process, I discovered that the orginal electrolytic filter capacitor was still good, so I opted to leave it in circuit since I don't plan on using this radio frequently. One of the pictures shows the process of replacing one of the dial strings which was an exercise in patience. I eventually gave up trying to follow the diagram provided by Sams and figured it out myself.
I cleaned up the cabinet with some Meguiar's automotive detailing spray and salvaged a compatible handle from a signal generator I was giving away. The fold-out map apparatus was also broken, so I bought a used one off of Ebay. I still need to find one more knob for the radio, but it works great...you can listen for yourself by watching the video at the end of this page.
A look at the chassis before I started
Experimenting with dropping resistors for the new diode rectifier
