[Backtoreality]

In January 2019 I bought one of these valve testers from an eBay seller, sold as untested which is usually the case. I had been looking for one for quite a while watching how much they were going for. The ones I'd seen were sold for £120 plus so I felt quite happy to get mine for £100.
When it arrived all of the fixing screws had been previously removed from both units, the valve socket panel had a gap at the bottom right corner and the escutcheon? (frame over the 9 rotary switches ) was broken over the 3 rightmost switches and there were bakelite pieces missing.
After examining both units I removed the escutcheon and made a mould with blu-tack of the good half, which could be used to repair the broken half.
I then filled the gap on the socket panel with a magnoval socket. I also examined the meter which seemed to have real problems with stickiness. The rear spring looked fine but I suspected problems with the front spring and possibly dirt/metal causing sluggishness.
A whole year passed by before Covid 19 gave me a push and I had the time to continue so...…..
Task 1 Check the socket panel and locate breaks and dry joints in the wiring, of which there were 5!
Task 2 Replace the 3 capacitors on the panel, 2 of which were well out of spec. 0.001uF 1000V
Task 3 Check and replace 1 out of spec resistor on the main unit: 100K which had gone significantly high. The others were well in tolerance including the 2 300K resistors which were supposed to be 250K according to the circuit. Replace the mains flex.
Task 4 Wrap the damaged areas of the sheath of the umbilical flex with linen thread.
Task 5 Connect the units and check all the voltages according to the fault finding guide using my recently restored Avo Model 7 - all spot on!
Task 6 Respray the cases and the socket panel with black hammered enamel.
The meter was next on the list so I removed it for examination and it was clear the front spring had been replaced, very badly and was fouling itself. Not wishing to destroy the meter I tried carefully to straighten the spring but gave up and replaced it in the unit.
After reassembly I decided to test the tester with some valves.
First to hand was an EF80. Carefully following the instructions I set all the switches appropriately and eventually was ready to push the rocker switch for the mutual conductivity test. The pointer flew to the left. Puzzling! After reading more on the forum I decided to test a rectifier. Everything set up as per the instructions and as the valve, a 5Z4G, warmed up the pointer went hard to the left again!
The answer was the meter connections had been reversed by a previous owner! I wondered if I could have done this, but no I hadn't, the wires were carefully routed around the magnet and had to be re-routed to reach the correct contacts.
The tester now works and has successfully tested a number of valves including: 5Z4G, 5V4G, 5U4G, 5X4G, 4 x 5Y3GT, 431U, EZ81, 6V6G, 4 x 6V6GTs and a 25L6.
A sort of success because the tester is now operational but the meter has to be regularly tapped like a barometer to get the correct readings!!
Next step? Can I do what Andre did with his meter? Not sure but thanks to everyone who has contributed to any of the forum threads on the Avo 2 Panel Valve Tester, I've read them all again and again!
David