With a 1923 Dodge pickup I have recently purchased is an old car radio. It is a brown metal box as the core with two controls to the dash (tuner, probably volume and another knob( knobs and a circular dial)), and a large round speaker. Does anyone know what year it is and who could help me get it going in Perth WA.
I have put power to it and seems to connect ok to speaker but I couldn't tune into a station. cheers, John.

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Bull

Couple of issues here. It won't matter to the radio but a lot of early Dodges were positive earth.

Check the voltage of the radio is it 6V or 12V?

If it has not been run for some time The paper capacitors will have passed their use by date & need replacing and any electrolytic capacitors will have lost polarity or dried out and will also need replacing.

It is never a good idea to power these things up when they have been idle for several years.

Marc

It's 12V witha pos earth. Maybe I shouldn't of put power to it. The speaker is quite large as well. cheers, John

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Bull

Normally it pays to inspect the internals before firing it up. Most of the vibrator units had a foam sound deadner in them at that packs up & can cause shorting.

The old electrolytics' can present as a short circuit , straining a few freindships.

The set may have a model number on it at the back? Otherwise list all of the numbers on the valve eg 6X5 as that will help identify it.

Marc

I have had a look and the aluminium base has AMM 34 and a No 3489. 6 glass valves 2 the same with a date of 31/7/40 and A155 on them. 2 others have a wire to the top as these do. 2 cardboard? cylinders with DUCON on the sides, 1 aluminium cylinder, 2 rectangular boxes, 1 large one with a licensing agreement and a No 56673 on it.Also 1 ferrolcart vibrator.
So it looks like around a 1940 model Astor maybe if valves were original.
Thanks for the help so far.
Is there someone in WA or Perth that may help me get it up and running??
cheers, John.

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Bull

I will see if I can find info on the model. A few inquires in vintage care circles may help as a lot of those radios had different badges on them, but were the same.

If you have a branch of the Historical Radio Society of Australia (think you do) someone there may be able to help track someone down.

In the meantime, don't bother firing it up, I am confident it won't work & you can damage things proving me right..

6X5 was produced initially as a car radio rectifier valve and many of its design variants are notoriously unreliable.

Addendum: A look in AORSM's lists few car radios. Some actually had the info in the Workshop manual (factory) albeit that it is mainly cars of the fifties.

There was a local radio repairer here that did have a full set of AORSM"s lots of TV & other info.... when he closed down he turfed it. At least I did have some pleasure in pointing out that quite a bit of what he threw out was of monetary value.

It may be a good idea, even if you get help, to list the valves or take a photo of the inside. Often there are parts within that have dates on them. Eg the transformer on the speaker if its there.

Marc

QUOTE: There was a local radio repairer here that did have a full set of AORSM"s lots of TV & other info.... when he closed down he turfed it.

I remember when I was a kid there was as many TV shops as there were service stations. In total this would have meant a huge pool of resources and spare parts which I would say in most cases went to the tip when manufacturers started to embark on the planned obsolescence agenda.

One thing I've always wanted to do but don't really have the time or money to do is research the locations of old TV shops which have been abandoned since the business closed and then try to acquire the remaining stock and literature.

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A valve a day keeps the transistor away...

G'day Folks,

This range of Astor car radios came out around 1938. The range consisted of models AL and ALL (6 volt) and the AM and AMM models.

Valve lineup is; 6U7G, 6A8G, 6U7G, 6B6G, 6V6G and OZ4G.

Bull, if you can unlock your email address in your profile, I'll send you a schematic and some other notes.

Cheers, Graham...

If OZ4 is listed as the correct rectifier for that model it is a gas filled rectifier of the cold cathode type. It has no heater like the rest of those valves.

It will be interesting to see how they arranged the valve heaters as there would be five 6V heaters, I have not looked a their heater current..

The valve line up, apart from the rectifier, is a fairly standard one for that era.

Marc

Graham,
I hadn't realised that I had locked my email address.
I'd post a photo if I could. If you want ar anyone else wants a photo I can put it on the Dodge Bros forum at AACA or I can email direct to you.
cheers,
John

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Bull

For the benefit of all members e-mail addresses on profile pages are blocked by default and each member can then make a choice as to whether they'd like to display it.

Whilst the practice is not banned, I discourage members from posting e-mail addresses in the forums, instead directing those they converse with to their profile pages as e-mail addresses there are only available to members of this website and even then, only when they are logged in whereas email addresses posted on the forums are available to everyone, including spam robots. Whilst there is also a measure to trick spam robots I cannot offer a guarantee that it works.

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A valve a day keeps the transistor away...

G'day Marc,

In the 12V versions, all valves are wired in parallel in series
with a parallel choke and 40ohm resistor.

In the 6V versions, the 6V6 had a different feed from the other valves which were in parallel.

Hope the above makes some sense.

I believe that you have changed your email address. If you would like to see the circuits, send me a quick email and I'll reply with the diagrams.

Cheers, Graham...

I thought they shot themselves in the foot: correct.! I am fairly confident that 6X5 was created for car radio's & was around in 1937.

Despite variants of it being notorious for shorting, that would have made things a whole lot simpler. 12V you had 3 Pairs, 6V all parallel & no wasteful resistor.

Did change email, satellile was totally unreliable, so I have become yet another little tadpole in a big pond.

Just change the last part to bigpond.com


I will slip the covers off of modem (6 in 2 years) & see I what I think is & have been told is the issue; exists?

Marc

According to radiomuseum.org, the 6X5 has been around since 13 Feb1936, and the majority of usage references for the years 1936 and 1937 are car radios:

http://www.radiomuseum.org/tubes/tube_6x5.html