Packard Forum Index » Post-War (1946-54)

Interesting, I thought most tube radios were not polarity specific.

Less,
Your radio may not be working but you have gotten lots of good 'sound' advise from your post here!

I have the same basic radio in my 41 Clipper. A good friend of mine went through my radio last year and got it working. Wonderful, but he never wants to see a 40s car radio again. (bad switch, bad vibrator, several tubes, and numerous rewire issues). He refuses money, but I owe him big for all his time. I have a year-long-list of 'thank-yous' for he and his wife.

Bottom line is just what others have posted above. He would touch an old wire, only to have the 67 year old insulation 'explode' into a cloud of dust. He had to rewire 3 wires for every one wire he fixed.

It now works but he advised me that it has a limited shelf life. I turn it on to show it off (looks great). BUT I plan to put a different sound system (hidden) for actual listening enjoyment. Some folks use the glove box. I think an upholstered box that sits in the middle of the front bench seat will be my plan (armrest, storage, power source, compact radio, MP3, speakers). I don't plan to use the old radio as a everyday event.

Maybe Santa will bring an iPod and a Console base! [Don't know that I can be that good all year, though.]

DanL

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Just my two cents worth. I like to see people use the radio they have. Seems more fun to me to use the 59 year radio. It won't hurt the radio to use it,( I run mine in my 51 everyday without any problems), in fact it probably does more harm to not run it. These radios are easy to repair and keep running. I cut my teeth repairing tube type radio sets and repairing mine was great fun, a walk through the past for me.

BTW you can have an input wired in to the existing car radio's amplifier where you can plug in an CD or MP-3 player. I hid a miniature toggle switch accessible at the bottom of the radio that switches between the radio and the new input. I put the CD player in the glove box to hide it. Now I listen to 50's rock and roll any time I want. Doesn't sound bad either. The volume and tone knobs control the new input.

An added thought, I can't recommend more highly the solid state replacements for the old mechanical vibrators. I will never use an old one again.

A note: someone said you could fix an old defective vibrator by opening it up and cleaning the contacts. I have done this many times, mainly because new vibrators are sometimes hard to come by, and had less than satisfactory results. Yes they will work for a time more but not long. In any case if you try fixing or replacing the vibrator always change the 1600 volt damper capacitor.

Another long winded story, I was friends with the owner of a wrecking yard in Lemoore Calif back in the 70's. In his back room I ran across a box of maybe 15 brand new vibrators that fit the radio in my 55 Olds. I bought all of them thinking I would have a life time supply. You could change the vibratos on the Olds without pulling the radio so that's what I did. I knew better but I never replaced the damper cap. I went through all of them in around two years. Now all I have is a pile of burnt up ones. If I still had the car it would be the solid state one for sure.



Just reread all this. Looks more like a quarters worth.

I survived my youth without learning a thing about radios, but my father was an EE and spent a lot of time playing with old radios. I do recall that about 75% were fixed by spraying a little cleaner on the tuner. On a table top, the "tuner" would look something like an old potato slicer.

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Yes, That was the tuning capacitor. A variable cap that was part of what was called a "tank" circuit. My Dad was a EE too. I learned a lot from him when I was a kid. More than I realized at the time. I remember asking him what I thought was a question with a simple answer then find out that nothing with him had a simple answer. We would go to the kitchen table with a ream of paper and 3 hours later I had forgotten the original question but ended up with quite a lesson in electronics. He loved to teach. Glad he did. I made my living in electronics repair of one sort or another.

Don't be afraid to use your old tube radio if it has been properly rebuilt! It will last longer if you use it from time to time than if you don't!

The tubes have an average life of 10,000 hours and replacements are not that expensive. The vibrator is a problem but can be replaced with a solid state unit that has no hum.

For FM and CD player you can get a cheap CD player at Walmart and wire it into your original tube radio amplifier and speaker. The CD player will even work on 6 volt, positive or negative ground. They are made to work on 9 volts but 6 volts is plenty. Just wire it up to your radio wire.

The old tube radios have their own distinct tone and sound. "It even sounds old fashioned" as my girl friend put it LOL.

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I agree with Rusty O\'Toole