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Old 26th Dec 2017, 10:27 pm   #1
high_vacuum_house
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Default Bodged Bush VHF90

Here is a recent restoration on a Bush VHF 90 picked up at the recent Radiophile Gnosall meet up for £4. It looked complete and restorable condition and was the only bidder.

On the bench with the back off it was obvious that someone had been in here before. There was a new 15W dial lamp crudely fitted on a piece of wire wobbling about soldered to the back of the on/off switch and a wirewound resistor stuck on a pillar from a speaker screw. Looked like it had come from an old cooker!

First job after removing the chassis was to remove the new bodged in dial light and unsolder it from the switch. The wirewound resistor and pillar were removed. This was acting as the dial lamp shunt and a nice green vitreous china 7W replacement was fitted under the chassis where it should have been. Both original dial bulbs were blown and 2 new ones fitted. The wiring to the output transformer was dire and had been crumbling away where it went through the chassis. This was replaced with the correct colour silicon wire obtained from the Harpenden event.

On static test the set was dead. This was a wire from the mains switch which the insulation had failed and had arced to chassis going through a hole fusing the wire. This was replaced and then had a sensible resistance between live and neutral when switched on. On ramping up the voltage the dial lamps started to get brighter and all looking ok. There was a fizz a pop and the dial lamps went out. This was the capacitor between the UY85 anode and chassis going S/C and taking out one of the new dial lamps!

I decided to change a few of the most suspect capacitors at this stage and all were remarkably leaky on the megger. After replacing one of the now dead dial lamps power was ran up and radio 3 came in nice and clear with no hum. I monitored the HT current and voltage and both were near enough spot on for a couple of hours.

The set sounded good though Classic FM was just on the fringe of the mechanical stop on the dial so I unscrewed and moved the VHF tuner adjuster on the AM variable capacitor drum which has the effect of losing possibly 0.5MHz on the lower end of the scale and adding 0.5MHz at the top end of the scale. There is nothing to listen to at 88MHz but this does mean I can now receive Classic FM loud and clear.

The cabinet and knobs were very filthy (possibly being left in an oily kitchen environment) needed a good clean and the dial was good so it all went back together well. There is a few deep scratches on one of the top corners but it doesn't show up. The speaker cloth is a little loose on the L/H side but I cannot easily fix this without making it considerably worse.

Another VHF radio for the shelf. I have become attached to these early valve VHF receivers as the classical music stations are more interesting and relaxing to listen to rather than radio 4 or the sport channels!!

Christopher Capener
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Old 27th Dec 2017, 2:53 am   #2
Boater Sam
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Default Re: Bodged Bush VHF90

Good save Christopher.
I have had a couple of these, I think I still have one that works.
You have done well to get it working without having to rework the HT switch for the FM front end. Both of mine had bad leakage across the wavechange switch and I had to use a microswitch on the linkage to replace the bad section.
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