Cable Change

The volume cable unwound when I cut it causing the cable to twist when rotating, live and learn... Alan brought over another cable he had and another head that has knobs he prefers. Sadly, this new cable was a bit short but I was able to make a short extension...

 New cable has one strand that unwound but only one strand will not affect it's performance

 This is volume cable end from the recent head. Someone must have cut it in the past, probably why it was unwound.

 I wound up the one strand on the new cable and put heat shrink over it to hold it in place. Good news is that the new cable is a bit smaller in diameter so a bit of heat shrink works...

 Interesting that the recent head's knobs are different from the other head. The recent head's two knobs are the same. The old head uses different knobs...

 This is the cable extension. I turned down some 1/4" brass rod and drilled one end for the cable.

Control Cable Ends

I thought I would try my hand at using the Dremel tool to make the control cable ends. They are not beautiful but do work well. The ends are drilled through and the cable is epoxied in place.

Control Cables

I did some more work on the control cables. I ordered and received some 3/4" brass rod for making the connectors to the radio case. I turned them on the lathe so that two dogs locked into the chassis. To prevent them from loosening I added a 2-56 screw that lacks the rotation. The control cable sheath is affixed using to 4-40 set screws at 90° from one another.

Drilling hole for control cable

Cleaning up the end

Cleaning up the side

 I didn't have a tool to cut the narrow groove so I ground the tang of a file to the shape I wanted and used that.

 Cutting off the turned connector

 Marking the dogs

 Cutting the dogs

 Cutting excess metal off

 Test fitting the dogs

 Set screws

 Retaining screw

Retaining screw inside view

Speaker and Whatnot

Made this plaster Of Paris mold of the tuning and volume control cable socket on the radio. I did order sand cast sand to make metal ones..

Found a speaker that will fit perfectly:

Inverted speaker bezel:

And it begins

Alan brought over the subject radio the other day and we took the cover off to check out the guts and to cogitate about the control head interface.

Here are some pictures of the VW that the radio will go into. The plan is to mount the control head on the steering column and the box under the front hood.

I have checked the rotation direction of the tuning knob/dial and the tuner in the box. They all rotate correctly, dial rotates to higher frequency while the tuner slugs pull out of the coils.

Dial light is has the wrong holder.

Original speaker was swapped out with this one. The original holes were used to mount it and oddly the replacement speaker is a field coil type. I would have thought that a replacement speaker would be a PM type. Maybe it was swapped out before PM speakers became available...

Serial number. Looks like it was masked off and then the box painted...

Connection interface. One is power and the other the dial light. The three in the middle are blank.

End user wants 12 volt negative ground. To do the conversion all the tubes need to be replaced with 12 volt versions and the power transformer primary rewound.

Speaker removed, one can see the original footprint of the original speaker.

Speaker has a warped cone so that the voice coil is rubbing. If this guy is to be used it will need a recone. End user wants to mount the box in the front compartment so a remote speaker connection is needed.

Speaker footprint.

Tuning/volume control cable interface. 8 spline.

I added a release agent inside the splined area and injected RTV to make a mold so that new control cable end can be made.

Control cable dimensions.

Chassis screws, fancy versions. Three types, slotted/pointed, pointed, and blunted.

Small crack found in the speaker bezel.