You're gonna be sorry you asked old Gabby Graham Fred.
One of the guys here on the forum asked me last summer if I wanted it he said it was in pretty sad shape. I wasn’t interested in buying it, you know how that goes, unless it’s a factory radio they really aren’t worth much at all. Well he wrote back and said I could have it and he would even ship it over to me, he really didn’t want to see it go in the dumper and that was probably what he would end up doing with it. I figured what could I loose on a deal like that, I maybe could use a tube or transformer out of it, if it wasn’t burned up.
It sat on the bench till the first snow set in, that’s when I migrate from the garage down to the basement and clean up the radio bench for a couple of months radio work. When I picked up the Coronado there was all kinds of what-all rattling around in the case and when I opened it up a bunch of junk fell out glass, one knob and some loose screws, etc. I looked it over and found that only one tube had broken and was scattered all over the insides, the rest were still in place and it was quite dirty insice. The tuner didn’t work it was gummed up pretty bad but no plates were bent, the dial string was messed up, it had the wrong wrap on it and springs were wrong. The tuner shaft bushing had come loose and was jerry rigged to keep it in the chassis and that knob was missing. The foam bumper on one of the cans that spaces out the chassis from the case was dried out and all shrunk up. There were a couple of broken terminal strips, one where the power enters the case. The coils in the power supply were pulled out of their covers and spread apart because of this. There was a shorted wire off the vibrator to the transformer and one of the transformer leads was broken off where they drop through the chassis. The ends were about to pop out of most of the paper caps. The front panel had been dropped and was bent back in and the volume control was pointing off in some odd direction and there were some deep burns where it looks like someone touched it with a soldering iron. The bezel was also pretty badly scratched up and you could just barley make out the station numbers on the dial face. The dial face it self appeared to be Tenite and had shrunk up enough to pull the two rivets out at one end. The mount for the dial face was bent back and the mounting tabs pulled loose, I held the dial up to the light an nothing shone through, it’s supposed to be backlit when the radio is on. There were a few blistered resisters and some crumbling wire insulation. The output transformer was supposed to be mounted on the speaker yoke and the mount was broken off and the speaker basket was warped, must have happened when they broke the mount. The cabinet was badly bent up all around the edges, looked like someone had pried it open with a screwdriver a few times and all the paint was worn off most of the cabinet. The ears on the mounting plate on top of the cabinet were bent and twisted like it had been stepped on while still mounted under the dash. I checked the vibrator and it twern’t vibrating, I checked the power transformer and it wasn’t shorted or open. I hooked up the speaker to test it and it was badly garbled with very low output and full of buzzing bees.
So, all in all it looked like it might be worth saving!!!!! Anyway it was mostly all still there and I just love a challenge so I decided to go ahead and put a few evenings into it. Turned out to be a couple of week’s worth in the end.
I opened and re-tuned the vibrator, straightened the speaker basket, re-shimmed and re-glued the speaker voice coil, repaired the broken output xformer mount, re-caped it, replaced the bad wiring and resistors. Pulled the tuning cap and cleaned and lubed it, re-strung it with the correct springs. Straightened the chassis and made tooling to reset the brass tuner shaft bushing, took an impression of the one knob and cast a new one. Sanded and re-polished the bezel, cleaned the volume control, made new terminal strips (they were special) and re-riveted them to the chassis. Stripped and straightened the cabinet and mounting bracket and fixed the stripped side screws then re-painted it. Replaced a couple of tubes and gave it a little tune up and she was sittin’ here on the bench in the basement pullin’ in Toronto last night. She’s a little tattered after 58 years and has a couple of scars on her face but it’s still quite serviceable and would look pretty good slung under the dash of an early 50’s car or truck as a period correct aftermarket 6v radio. With all of the period correct factory radios going for what they are nowadays, this would be a real nice alternative. I might even use it in that ’52 I’m gonna look for when I finish up the truck.
Well, I’ll just quote my buddy that was over today, when I told him someone had asked about that radio I was working on, he said, “I’ll bet he’s sorry he asked about it now!”
So this is the finished radio, the bezel is one of those that are very special, all molded and impossible to duplicate, it had a couple of burn spots that didn’t clean up completely.
http://good-times.webshots.com/photo/2514539690098611668kjnPqZ Makin’ up some new knobs.
http://good-times.webshots.com/photo/2567630020098611668pjONTv Denny Graham
Sandwich, IL
