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Old 15th Aug 2012, 1:32 am   #1
westcliff
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Default Bush VHF61

My first posting in this part of the forum.

Every time I restore an old radio, I learn something new. Usually it's how to do something I've never done before, but occasionally it's how not to do something. This restoration involved the latter learning experience.

Now that my friends know I like to fix old radios, they find them in attics and give them to me and this Bush was no exception; a friend popped round one evening and just handed it over.

It was dull and carpeted inside with dust, but everything was there and there was no obvious damage. The year of manufacture seems to be 1960 as the Plessey smoothing cap can bore that date and the valves were all dated 1959 and 1960.

The most memorable thing about this project was the sheer number of Hunts capacitors. I replaced 22 capacitors, all but two or three being Hunts. Some of them were not easy to get at, especially those around V2 and V3.

The resistors were all checked and 14 were replaced as they were out of tolerance. I also replaced the dial lamp with a spare one I found attached to the back of an old GEC on my to do pile. All of the valve bases and switches were cleaned with Servisol.

The case and dial glass cleaned up nicely, as did the magic eye surround, although I broke one of the four securing pins during its removal. It seems to be attached securely enough with the three remaining pins though.

The knobs were grimy and the volume/tone knob had a broken shaft on the tone part (I'm still looking for a replacement ). When I reassembled everything, I was able to get the tone segment of the knob to fit the pot shaft so it does work.

I put everything back together and plugged it in to the mains via the lamp limiter and RCD. The lamp filament settled down to a red glow and after a long time, music could be heard on MW. It was very faint and not too healthy sounding, so I switched to LW, which was worse, then VHF, of which there was not a peep.

The next five minutes produced ever-increasing volume on MW and LW. I guessed the smoothing caps were re-forming nicely. The set was then sounding healthy and loud on MW and not bad on LW, but still no VHF.

Off I went to my valve stash and returned with a NOS Brimar ECC85 and a NOS Mullard ECH81. I expected the ECC85 to be the cause of the VHF problem but the ECH81 in the set looked a bit well-used and the inside of the glass envelope was pretty much covered in silvering. After I replaced these two valves, VHF came in loud and clear. I might also try replacing the two EF89s later on, to see if any improvement ensues.

So far so good. One thing I noticed was that the smaller of the two coils on the ferrite aerial was loose, so I decided to move it around to see if better performance would result. This is the thing I have learned not to do. Do not poke a ferrite aerial with a plastic knitting needle, because you will break one of the tiny thin wires and you radio will go dead, just like that. Well that's what happened when I poked around with my knitting needle.

Because the thin wire was no longer long enough to reach its tag, I had to extend the tag with a tiny bit of bell wire to effect a fix.

Another thing I learned is to note all of the disassembly steps and don't forget any of them during reassembly. I forgot to attach the magic eye wiring to its clamp by the speaker and that caused the tuning drive to jam when the wires dropped down behind the dial glass. Fortunately, no damage was done. I hate restringing dial drives.

The set has had around five hours of use today and I'm very pleased with it so far.
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Old 15th Aug 2012, 9:20 am   #2
howard
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Default Re: Bush VHF61

Well done westcliff,

your VHF61 looks very nice. These are attractive well built sets which work well once overhauled.

We all make mistakes.

Howard
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Old 15th Aug 2012, 9:47 am   #3
PJC58-Hythe
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Default Re: Bush VHF61

Great job, well done.

If we don't make mistakes we never learn anything!

Peter
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Old 15th Aug 2012, 10:07 am   #4
Nickthedentist
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Default Re: Bush VHF61

An excellent result, and nice write-up.

It's generally agreed that these perform very well indeed on VHF, but that AM performance is mediocre, so don't expect too much.

Nick.
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Old 15th Aug 2012, 2:10 pm   #5
Mark James
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Default Re: Bush VHF61

I too finished one of these earlier in the summer. It is now our kitchen radio. I have been very pleased with its performance on VHF (Good that it extends to Classic FM). My 25 year old son (used to MP3 etc) cannot believe the quality of the sound!
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Old 15th Aug 2012, 10:34 pm   #6
Mark the Mender
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Default Re: Bush VHF61

My mum has one I gave her. She has it in the kitchen and is used daily whilst she does the cooking.

Good set these well done.

cheers Mark
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Old 17th Aug 2012, 6:04 pm   #7
westcliff
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Default Re: Bush VHF61

I have to agree about the set's VHF quality, I am absolutely delighted with it and have been using it to the exclusion of all my other radios since I finished the restoration.

Thanks for your kind comments.

Gus.
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Old 22nd Aug 2012, 1:05 pm   #8
IJK2008
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Default Re: Bush VHF61

Looks great, Gus.

Ian
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