- 2024
- Oct
- 26
A Westinghouse H-636T6 AA5+1 Radio
This is the radio that I picked up at an antique store a few weeks ago. It was pretty obvious that the filters were bad, and the tuning gang was a bit gritty and in need of some cleaning and lube. In order to make this thing play again, the first thing to do was replace the filter capacitors.
Here’s the capacitor’s top. You can see it’s not in the best of shape.
There’s a lot of cracks in the device. The first thing to do is get the thing out of there.
Here’s the spot on the board we’ll be working with. The original capacitor is a 3-leg device where the legs have a crimp that physically anchors it to the board in the square holes shown before being soldered. In this case, there’s enough pad to get solder wick on it. I like to add some fresh solder to get the joint clean and shiny again before wiking it off.
The old solder cleaned up nicely and was removed. Notice there’s multiple holes there, so multiple kinds of parts could be used.
Is the old capacitor actually bad? The doctor says yes:
That’s supposed to be a 50μF, not 8μF…not to mention the 26% loss and 140Ω ESR. Is it bad? Yes. Very yes.
A new capacitor pack was made from two 47μF capacitors. I used some old standoffs rescued from a dead project at a former employer to keep them off the board.
The new leads are much smaller than the old ones, so a lot of solder is needed to fill the pad. Once it cooled, a quick cleanup with some iso alcohol and an orange stick got rid of most of the flux.
Since the plug was clipped into the case (it needs replaced as it’s hard as a rock!) I sliced the old rubber off and pulled it free. I plugged in the radio, tuned it to approximately a station, pulled the knob out and…
WLW, weak but audible greeted me. The first words this thing said in decades was a story about how someone is bombing someone else (again) in the middle East. You could literally be at any point in radio’s history and you’d hear similar.
There’s one last thing this radio needs before the tuning gang gets cleaned and the radio gets an alignment…this part:
Here’s a “Bumblebee” capacitor, or a “bumblebomb” as they’re called. These are a plastic cased capacitor, which tends to crack and leak. This one is directly across the AC line, and it’s going to need replaced. I’m pretty sure I have some suitable replacements here somewhere from another repair. It’s just going to take a minute to find them.
That’s it, that’s really all the device needed to play again - I’m still convinced the seller didn’t know to pull out the knob to turn it on, but that’s not really an issue here. There will probably be a part two later, but there won’t be much to tell on it - just a report on how the alignment went. Stay tuned!
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