Made a trip to Radio Shack yesterday and picked up some more solder wick and a small magnifying glass. Made some good headway last night on replacing the capacitors in the S-53A. I replaced the final paper tubular capacitor at about 2:00am. I was on a roll so didn't want to stop! The solder wick is really essential in getting the old joints de-soldered. Eventhough there is alot of open space in the radio some of the connections are really hard to get at with a solder bulb or solder sucker. The solder wick can get in and around other components very well. The magnifying glass comes in handy in reading the values on the capacitors as well as getting a better look at the solder joints. I haven't done this much solder work since my Air Force days in the '80s. Yes, we still made repairs at the component level and even had some radio gear with glass tubes!
I still need to replace three electrolytic capacitors that are apparently in a sealed can. This will be a little more challenging. I haven't decided if I'm going to try and place the new caps inside the old can or not. I'll decide after I get the can out and see what I'm dealing with. Once that is complete then I'll test the power cord and the transformer. I'll need to borrow a variac from one of my buddies. I'll probably build one of those "dim bulb testers" as well and use it to test for shorts.
http://antiqueradio.org/dimbulb.htm
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| View with all the new "orange dot" caps installed |
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| Close up of some of the new caps in place |
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| magnifying glass sure comes in handy |
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| All of the old paper caps |
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