Ekco AC77

[Yorkie]

I've been making steady if spasmodic progress on this radio and have removed and cleaned all the components such as tuning cap, IFTs, OPT, tuning drive and have removed all of the old wiring. I've made careful drawings to (hopefully!), minimise the chance of wiring errors when re-building it. There was no prospect of leaving the chassis as it was - though it's almost 80 years old, it wasn't well painted in the first place as will be evident from the pics, but fortunately the rust wasn't too deep.

Recently I made an impulse buy of an 'electric file' on offer cheaply at Aldi - one of those jobbies which had a 1cm wide continuous belt. Didn't know how it would stand up and I did wonder if the narrow belt would keep popping off. I thought it might prove useful to de-rust the chassis so I gave it a go this afternoon and was agreeably surprised. It has electronic speed control and I set it at the lowest speed. It only took about 45 mins to de-rust the whole chassis, though there were some nooks and crannies which needed to be finished by hand. I used three of the small sanding belts in the process and found them surprisingly durable. (They're about 45cms in circumference). I then gave the chassis a good going over with Jenolite rust remover, cleaned it off, rinsed and dried it with a hot air gun, and have since given it a coat of acid-etch primer.

When I've rubbed it down and given it another coat of primer and top coat, I'll post an update and when I get a few mins, I'll take some pics of the cleaned up components ready for installation.

Ordinarily, I wouldn't bother to re-stuff caps, but the ones in this set are in waxed cardboard tubes and far larger than their modern equivalent, so I decided to retain and re-stuff them so that they look more in keeping - not that they're on display. I removed the pitch from each end, desoldered and removed the wire terminations from the eyelets, fitted a new cap with wire terminations through they eyelets, then sealed the ends with two-part epoxy know as 'Super Steel'. Despite its name, it isn't steel and it's none conductive (Ive laid a strip on glass and subjected it to 500V DC and 1,000V AC on a lekage tester and it shows no sign of leakage). The merit of Super Steel is that it dries to black gloss and looks just like pitch. It's extremely hard and I've used it for such things as filling holes in die-cast aluminium boxes, and repairing Bakelite cabinets prior to spraying. It sands very well and when sanded takes on a dull grey (steel like) appearance. (You can get it on e-bay as well as shops such as Halfords). I've attached pics of a cap and the product.

Really, this unexceptional (if old) rather shabbily built set has little to be commended and doesn't warrant this degree of attention, but for me, it's a first attempt at totally stripping down and re-building a set with little regard for the time and cost. (It's a hobby innit?)

Hope that's of interest.