Please don't ban me!

[Mike Watterson]

One transistor might be an IF pre-amp. Separate osc and mixer is rare.

[boater sam]

Now being an old boy, transistor sets are a rarity here, transistor FM sets are never seen. With nothing to lose I will straighten out the 3 coils that I can see that have been squashed flat.

I have added the Thomson circuit and spec here if it helps but as I said, it may not be this set. 

https://html.alldatasheet.com/html-pdf/2...A1220.html

[Mike Watterson]

Use a spark plug gauge set to progressively increase space between turns. It's rare that the coils aren't spaced about 1/2 wire thickness.

[boater sam]

A quick look this morning has revealed that the largest coil in the VHF part of the circuit has never been soldered in properly. Whist gently trying to straighten it out, both ends pulled out of the wax that was holding it. 
The ends of the wire are tinned but for sure it was not soldered to the pcb pad well if at all.

Now I am faced with getting the board away from the plastic panel that holds the tuning spindle and cord drive, the tuning scale and pointer, the volume control and the wave change lever. There are 4 screws and I am hoping that the whole assembly will lift off the solid dielectric tuning capacitor spindle without having to take the pointer and cord off as I can see no way it is attached other than more glue like the control knobs.

[Mike Watterson]

There aren't components either side?

Often that largest one is in series with VHF aerial, which is either a trailing wire or telescopic. If that's the case then clipping a wire to the RF tuning cap (1 in 4 chance of right pin) will do as an aerial to test.

A decent valve FM set tuned at about 87.5 to 97.5 MHz will pick up the transistor LO if the aerials are interconnected. Tune faulty set across entire band at each 0.5 MHz of 87.5 to 101 MHz to find the transistor set LO and then you can adjust the LO. It's which ever coil moves the frequency.

You should be able to get the other coils OK and LO tuned without the big coil if it's just in the aerial circuit.

[boater sam]

Had a determined attempt to sort this radio today. Its been nagging at me.

To recap, medium and long wave are now working fine but the FM is dead. There is a coil detached from the pcb which I think was never soldered on properly.
So I needed to access the foil side of the pcb to refit the coil. The pcb is held onto the plastic frame which carries the cord drive, tuning scale and pointer. I was hopeful that the assembly as a whole would pull off the tuning capacitor spindle, wrong again. Six screws hold the pcb, these came out easily.  Gently trying to get between the panels to prise the shank of the pointer off the spindle failed, it is firmly stuck on.
I will have to replace the coil by soldering to whatever components leads it is connected to.
Probing down the holes that the coil fell out of with a bit of wire, and onto the leads of nearby component revealed  that one end connected to a capacitor and the other to a leg of a transistor which is soldered very close to the board.
With some very careful soldering the coil was refitted.  Testing with fingers crossed, and the radio works!
I have put the whole horrible thing back together, will need to make a new back panel and replace all the labels that were glued on it.

The end of a deeply unpleasant repair. At least I now know the problems and frustrations of repairing these sets.
So if anyone has one that needs repair,                              don't bring it to me!

Thanks for all the help and advice, it was extremely useful.

[Mike Watterson]

You have great perseverance! Still, it's satisfying to fix something broken that probably would not have been commercially repaired. I suspected you'd have to do that with the coil!