Re: BigKev

Posted by BigKev On 2022/11/3 10:40:53

Kudos to Ralph the Radio guy. I've talked about the radio conversion he did and posted a video about it before (see link).https://youtu.be/mWTSQ4wVa9g

But, last week, while out for a drive, the wonderbar (signal seeking) function stopped working. I pressed the bar, and the dial started to move and then stopped at the end of its travel without flipping back to the beginning. From there, it was dead. No matter where the dial was manually set, the wonderbar function wouldn't automatically move the dial.

I could still tune the radio manually, and the radio still worked. Just the signal-seeing portion was dead.

So I emailed Ralph and explained the issue, and he said we would take a look at it. So the radio came out of the car and went over for him to look at.

In less than 2 hours, he messaged me back and had it resolved. From what I understood from him, there are 3 spring-loaded inductor rods in the wonderbar mechanism that were used originally. The modern circuit board only requires a single one. One of the unused inductors had somehow gotten misaligned and caused a mechanical jam in the mechanism. So Ralph removed the offending inductor as it wasn't being used. Now everything is working again.

He refused any payment for the repair, which wasn't really his problem but a failure in one of the original radio parts. He stood by his work, which was done back in March 2020.

So if you looking for either regular radio repair (re-capping, tubes, etc.) or conversion, I highly recommend him.

He is based in the Chicagoland area but takes in work from all over the country.

I know a few other Packard folks have used him as well for pre and post-war radio repairs.