Hi All

I started to restore this Hotpoint M65ME for a friend today. it came to me with the golden line of "hav a look and see wot ya think, plug it in and it hums....." Well I am glad I dont plug in radios before opening them up

"NEVER PLUG IN A VALVE RADIO or OLD ELECTRONICS WITHOUT CHECKING THEM"

The issues I found that would have had it erupt into flames at a minimum or kill someone at worst.
1. HT cable was Perished, see the red and orange wire in the top part of the chassis this was all but shorting to the chassis.
2. Heater wire shorting and Perished see the yellow wire on the side of the chassis.
3. Power cable had been replaced and all sorts of wrong... Has a 3 core cable with the earth snipped at both ends. Active and Neutral were swapped. No securing of the cable at the chassis end.
4. Electrolytic caps were stuffed.
5. All "Mud" caps were cracked.
6. On a good note all resistors tested within tolerance when replacing the caps

So to even get this thing working at taken me about 4hrs work. Lucky that all coils, Transformers and speaker metered ok (Megger and DVM used where needed).

Once all that was taken care of I was able to power up slowly checking the power transformer as I wound it up to mains (Variac).

With the basic power supply good I inserted the valves and started checking, it came to life of sorts but the audio was very bad, the speaker cone had come away from the frame and rattled. This was sorted with a smear of Rubber cement around the edge of the cone and frame.

The alignment is way off and reception seems deaf. I have to restring and do a full alignment but ran out of time today.

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Valve radios, They just don't make them like they used to

Good write-up Flakes ... a timely reminder to interested, but inexperienced radio restorers. This write-up reinforces that these old radios can be worked on safely ... provided ... one learns .... and actively practises safety ... and has a little bit of patience.
Ditto for many other other hobbies.

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Cheers, Ian

I wonder if this was the same guy that had worked on the Healing I had recently? Similar faults.

I put a 12V 500μF cap in series with a 12V globe as I reckoned it would present as a short; When hooked to the battery the globe lit & stayed lit.

Marc

Photos uploaded.

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A valve a day keeps the transistor away...