Bodgery...in the interests of getting our sets going!

[JoshWard]

Rob's bodge reminds me of my old Ultra Transistor Six where to get it to work I had to apply pressure on the back of the wavechange switch. A few tie wraps going onto some metal work sorted that and after a couple of years the pressure applied had moved the wavechange switch so it worked perfectly

[Billy T]

Originally Posted by Peter.N.

Failure of the mains EHT transformer on early TVs was a dreaded event, the transformer itself was about £5.00 or a weeks wages, so, we used cut off the u/s winding with a hammer and cold chisel and then make up a doubler circuit on a piece of Paxolin with K3-40, I think they were, selenium rectifier sticks and a couple of TCC Visconel EHT capacitors, we fed the input from the line output valve anode. It didn't give as good a picture as the transformer but you could see it, even if you had to draw the curtains.

Peter

As I mentioned recently in another thread, removing failed mono overwinds via small hacksaw (no 'ammers & chisels' for us antipodeans) and replacing with a cheaper (and faster to fit) tripler fed off the Lopt anode, followed by judicious fettling of the flyback tuning to get the EHT down and the width right would make many an old pensioner happy. Further fettling without affecting optimum EHT voltage could be achieved by judicious variation of the 'S' correction cap value and the horizontal linearity control.

Cheers

Billy

[glowinganode]

Just to clarify, it wasn't my bodge, I just found it. The pull in coil had gone o/c but the holding coil was ok. The piece of wood limited the travel of the solenoid so that the holding coil could just pull the contactor in.
Rob.

[ppppenguin]

Originally Posted by Lucien Nunes

I can't imagine what wood cause those tree-phase contactors to stick...

They are perfectly oak kay. Or maybe they are pine ing for something.

Originally Posted by Lucien Nunes

I made some of those special solid brass fuses.....

Never been a problem with 2000 amp fuses. In 2000 amp circuits.

Always advisable to have leads with various connectors on one end and croc clips on the other. That way you can do such awkward connections as DIN to XLR and BNC to BS4343. The lead with a 13A plug on each end has its uses too, when you need to bridge power into an otherwise dead circuit.

The EHT bodge on my 702 TV is interesting. I haven't yet fully dismantled it to fit the nice rewound transformer but there's a couple of transformers, a tripler(?) probably just being used as a single rectifier along with the original smoothing caps. Works perfectly, spot on 5kV, so no huge incentive to sort it out quickly.

[Alistair D]

Originally Posted by ppppenguin

The lead with a 13A plug on each end has its uses too, when you need to bridge power into an otherwise dead circuit.

Widow maker perhaps.

Al

[sandbar40]

Re Sideband's orig. post,
I recently had to replace both IF transformers in a Columbus -NZ- radio,and although they came from a set with 455 Khz IF they were nowhere near this when put in the Columbus.

There were no caps in the cans, so i tried 100pf and this moved resonance down to below 400 Khz. Replaced with 50pf and was now able to peak at 455 Khz.

I'm wondering what influence circuit design has on IF transformer performance.

[Sideband]

Originally Posted by sandbar40

came from a set with 455 hz .

I hope that is supposed to be 455Khz....



SB

[Peter.N.]

Originally Posted by Billy T

As I mentioned recently in another thread, removing failed mono overwinds via small hacksaw (no 'ammers & chisels' for us antipodeans) and replacing with a cheaper (and faster to fit) tripler fed off the Lopt anode, followed by judicious fettling of the flyback tuning to get the EHT down and the width right would make many an old pensioner happy. Further fettling without affecting optimum EHT voltage could be achieved by judicious variation of the 'S' correction cap value and the horizontal linearity control.

Cheers

Billy

Many of our transformers had a seperate EHT winding on another bobbin which went right down to the core, so a chisel was really the easiest way of doing it without damaging the other windings. Triplers had not been invented here then so we had to make our own.

Peter

[Richard_FM]

Recently I was reading the home site of a collector who had the odd knack of picking up items that previous owners have performed some unorthodox repairs / upgrades.

These often seemed to be workarounds to avoid carrying a proper fault find & replace a faulty component.

I'm not sure if the site owner is a member here, but most of his collection was 1940s-50s radios & televisions.

When I was at Golbourne in November 2018 someone was talking about how he had to deal with a turntable that had been regreased with lard!

I'm sure there have been threads like this before, but I'm sure there are still some interesting stories to tell.

[michamoo]

I once got a Sanyo colour television working again temporarily by replacing a failed stanbye transformer with one "borrowed" from a scrap Roger Black exercise / running machine

[Nickthedentist]

I mended my parents' 1970s Indesit chest freezer using a motor from a Garrard 2025 and a model aeroplane propeller. It worked for many years.

[broadgage]

A safe bodge to a wrongly wired domestic lighting circuit.
Downstairs hall and upstairs landing lights both controlled by the same pair of two way switches.
Unfortunately the two lamps were wired in series, and this could not be corrected without installing an extra cable, a non trivial job as buried in the plaster.

The lights worked but very dimly despite use of 150 watt lamps.

A quote for several hundred pounds had been received to electrically rectify and then re-decorate.

I simply fitted 120 volt lamps ! and supplied some spares.

[mark2collection]

I once repaired an Intercity 125 train set by replacing the burnt out/original/obsolete clover-leaf motor, with a motor from a scrap CD-ROM tray drive.

Not only was the train much faster, it was an awful lot quieter too. The gentle sound of the train going over the track joins being the overriding sound, as it whispered along

15 years later, still working.

Mark

[Dai Corner]

Primary School play in the 1960s. 9 year old me was 'Assistant Lighting Director' in charge of home made lighting consisting of spotlights in plywood and cardboard enclosures covered in aluminium foil.

Unfortunately the plug fuse blew whenever the contraption was switched on so Teacher in charge paralleled two 13A outlets using flex, choc blocks and insulating tape with instructions to myself and 2nd Assistant Lighting Director to ensure we switched the two sockets on and off simultaneously.

I'm not sure whether that's better or worse than solid brass fuses but the show went on. He'd probably have been sacked if anybody had found out, even in those days.

[Boater Sam]

BASF 5 1/4" disc drive, head failing to pull in. Hold in worked but no one shot to get it moving.
Found odd dil14 chip had 4 one shots in it, one failed, totally no longer available. Take a 74 series one shot, patch one section onto the pins of the original, upside down. Worked till I gave it away.

[Radio Wrangler]

Bodgery by Joe Public divides the population in two.

Townies fixed everything with Sellotape, Ruralites used baler twine

Dad, having a garage business, used welding rod.

David

[Herald1360]

In this application, isn't an old wire coathanger just as applicable? Rehangs exhausts and fixes radio aerials too! Galvanised ones are better for the latter....

[Paul JD]

Only 2 things are needed for most bodge repairs, duct tape and a hammer. If something that should move doesn't - use the hammer. If something that shouldn't move does - use the duct tape.

[ekjdm14]

Worst bodge I can admit to as yet, regards getting a set working, is probably taping a broken PP9 connector's terminals on the top of a PP3 battery... There's time yet though and I have some valve data books plus a '30s set missing a PX4 here, so will likely be some more bodgery to report in future.

[whiskas]

There's also the similar 'glue it or grind it' approach... not that I necessarily approve!