Nordmende Transita Royal
 

I recently came across a Transita Royal that had been dumped by the roadside.
It was in an appalling state and because I like a challenge I rescued it and took it home.
How long it had been there I really don't know, but it was probably the dirtiest radio I've ever seen. See the pictures. 8-o
Over the next week or so I'll have a good look at it (for now it's resting in the garden shed) and report back on progress.

Re: Nordmende Transita Royal
 

I found a 1980/90s radio cassette player dumped in bushes a couple of years ago. It was late summer and the machine was mostly covered by fallen leaves so must have been there since at least before the previous autumn, possibly longer.
Inside the cabinet was home to various insects, spiders and slugs.
The mains transformer had turned into a block of rust and the cassette mechanism was heavily corroded.
I washed the radio chassis in warm soapy water, rinsed it and let it dry for a few days on top of the hot water tank before applying power from a bench PSU.
The radio actually worked and sounded quite good even though the speaker cones had partially disintegrated.
Your Nordmende does stand a good chance of playing again even if it looks a bit bedraggled. It's certainly worth a try. Good luck!

Michael.

Re: Nordmende Transita Royal
 

That is one rough radio, though as Michael suggests, cosmetic problems may be much easier to fix than a rotted speaker and corroded component wiring. I once did a TR82 in a pretty neglected state, but it wasn't as bad as that. With luck the speaker will be a common size which will be easy to replace.

Re: Nordmende Transita Royal
 

Nice and unusual find, a 50 year old radio and one I've rarely if ever seen offered in the UK. I hope it's not too badly corroded inside, the front doesn't appear to have suffered much at all.

Re: Nordmende Transita Royal
 

They are really nice little radios and very well built. As Paul says they are scare and usually fetch a good price when they come up for sale. You appear to have all the knobs and the aerial. The grille looks okay so you should end up with a half decent radio. The speaker could be an issue but the rest should be doable.

Good luck

Graham

Re: Nordmende Transita Royal
 

It'll be fine ..... I have great respect for these receivers. Yours is very similar to my Transita 'Automatic'. It's a light steel angle chassis with modular PCB's for the PSU, IF, AF etc.

Initially a bit vexing to work on - but O.K. once you get in to it. (You'll find that a mere four screws when removed from the base will permit removal of the base/battery compartment - which will permit the whole chassis complete with tuning scale etc. to be slid upwards out of the set).

Paul RK is spot-on ....... a very very nice find!!

Re: Nordmende Transita Royal
 

It's currently being cleaned up. The battery compartment is actually fine, no corrosion!
The biggest problem is that the dial is damaged by staining each end where it sat on disintegrated foam strips. The radio actually works fine on all wavebands although I noticed some distortion on LW strong signals - AGC fault perhaps? Will look into it as I have the service data.

Re: Nordmende Transita Royal
 

Remember there is currently a transmission fault affecting R4LW, so the radio may be fine (amazingly).

Re: Nordmende Transita Royal
 

Staining on the grey / body section of these scales is a problem with all these sets and their relatives i.e. even the late Transita 'Spezials' / 'Stradella's / 'Exports' etc. suffered from it. All mine have it to some extent - and it can only be cured by removing the scale and removing the adhesive-secured foam packing [which will doubtless worsen the problem] and then touching-up the missing grey body pigment with an exact match of benign paint.

(If and when you find this exact pigment match - send me a PM .... and I might attempt it!!)

Re: Nordmende Transita Royal
 

I've now finished the clean up, including the controls and switches and the radio is working very well on FM & MW but LW is still not perfect - moving the LW coil a little along the ferrite rod to reduce the signal strength has effected a cure of sorts! And frankly there's so little on the waveband that I doubt I'll look further for the actual fault (and it might be a transmission problem anyway).
The dial staining is so bad and will not clean off so I'll have to live with that too. Overall the radio is looking pretty good considering how bad it originally was - see the "after" pictures.

Re: Nordmende Transita Royal
 

Looking good colin

Re: Nordmende Transita Royal
 

Thats an amazing transformation!I am continually surprised by the high levels of patience and skill people on this forum have.

Re: Nordmende Transita Royal
 

Yes, a tremendous improvement.

Can you scan the tuning scale into a computer, clean it up and print it out again?

You may be able to whiten the knobs and wavechange buttons of you soak them in hydrogen peroxide or ordinary bleach.

Re: Nordmende Transita Royal
 

Lucky Dog! I knew that this would be fine!

Are you aware that the tone control is [probably] two-stage i.e. pull-up for one rotary range, and push-down for another? (Many people are unaware of this [the up/down movement is minimal] .... but on certain settings, the reception sounds positively distorted.) You may also find that if you push down on the [originally spring-loaded] AM and FM rotary tuning knobs ..... the scale should illuminate {well - it does on most of this Nordmende series ......}.

Very very nice ..........!!!!

Re: Nordmende Transita Royal
 

That's a very pretty radio, Colin. I find myself strangely attracted to European radios of this period - they seem to have a certain 'class'. An amazing restoration!

Re: Nordmende Transita Royal
 

Scanning the scale is not easy as it is held into the white surround by the chrome bezel and the fixing pins might break off if I undo them again. I can't easily scan the whole case. As to the tone control and pilot light switches, yes I had found them - there's little arrows on the dial indicating them. The pilot light is on permanently if you use a 7.5 Volt external supply through the DC socket (negative centre pin).

Re: Nordmende Transita Royal
 

That's cleaned up very nicely. The tuning scale doesn't look to bad. I took a radio into the local model shop a while back and managed to get a small paint tin that matched pretty well. It doesn't have to be an exact match as anything will look better than the damage. LW is pretty non existent now with Radio 4 on 198 being the only really usable channel. I can pick up French stations though. Great little radio so well done on reviving it.

Regards

Graham