Hi All.

A few weeks ago I took on the repair of a Pye radio, which turned out to have much more wrong with it than I had expected.
I worked on it only on weekends as I don't have much spare time.

Although I had the circuit diagram, I did not have the dial stringing information that I needed. The pressed out tongue on the tuning drum had snapped off and someone in the past had butchered the tention spring and poked it through the hole where the tongue had been.
This then fouled on the dial string and proceeded to cut away at the dial string running 1.0mm away on the other side of the drum.
Result, you guessed it. Snap. back to square one.

Chapter Two.
Perhaps forty years later, the radio comes to me for repairs. I repaired the tuning mechanism, replaced the four electrolytic capasitors, the paper caps, the burnt and out of tolerence resistors, the cotton covered rubber mains lead, and its leathal styled mains plug. Secured the new mains lead/plug with a nylon "P"clip.

Chapter Three.
Time to power up. It was about time I brushed the dust off my isolation transformer, my variac, and my multimeter.
It was then that I discovered two faulty valves, a 6V6 and a 5Y3. Also the speaker transformer was open.
Another fault was that not all of the shielded cables were earthed. Perhaps this is why extra earths were run to the goat shields.

Chapter Four.
Next, worst of all, I discovered that the aerial input transformer had an open circuit secondary The aerial input was deader than Flairs!
At this stage I had to bail out as I had used much more time and parts than I had expected. Who would have expected so much wrong with a set that appeared to not have been played with? It will tune in the stations if one by-passes the aerial input stage.
I could have disconnected the leads to the aerial coil and fitted another elsewhere under the chassis, but far too long had been spent.
It gets to a stage where the more you do the more you loose.

Chapter Five.
I could not find any information about the radio other than the schematic. I did discover one other in New Zealannd
I took many photographs of the cabinet, from all angles, and also the chassis as they appear not to have been worked on previously and should therefore be a valueable reference for anyone working on a butchered one.

Excuse me now while I go off and drink myself into a coma. Just kidding.

Wayne.

Some you win, some you lose.

the radio comes to me for repairs

I take it this was not a commercial repair job?

"Love jobs" have devoured a lot of my time lately.

Yes, I'm sure lots of us have pockets full of thankyou's.
It does not pay the real bills, let alone, solder, cleaning agents, resistors, capacitors and a whole lot of other stuff these good friends of ours become when they have electrical problems.
Not even a bottle of good Irish Whisky at Christmas time.
JJ