Wireless Set No. 52 Canadian - Project

[David Dunlop]

This next reassembly step is one I did not fully understand, or appreciate , when I was disassembling this component last winter. It simply involves installing the two small screws in the first photo through their holes in the lower front panel, into the two heavy duty brackets shown in the 2nd photo. When this is done, the front panel is then held securely in place on the Coil Chassis assembly with the main mounting hardware holes (two vertical rows of three sets of hardware) are perfectly lined up Again, see the 2nd photo to see what I am referring to.

The space behind the two end angle brackets into which all this hardware fits, is extremely limited and full of other hardware. You need both hands completely free to work with each hardware set of screw, Shakeproof Washer and hex nut. See the 3rd and 4th photos in this Post. I am impressed the Designers thought of this.

The last photo shows these two screw back in place and I am now psyching myself up for the big challenge ahead of installing these siz sets of hardware.


David

[David Dunlop]

The two lowermost and challenging sets of hardware to mount the front panel assembly to the Coil Chassis have now been reinstalled. The round head, slotted, machine screws in these two hardware sets are shorter than the remaining, upper four sets. With the Shakeproof washer in place, the screws will only run home about two thirds of the way into their hex head nuts.

Gravity helps get these two hardware sets installed, so I started by resting the chassis assembly on its front panel on a small 4x4 block of wood, padded with an old cloth. It is important doing this and keeping the centre of gravity of the coil assembly squarely over the wood block to avoid it tipping while you are working on it. I oriented the chassis with the bottom facing me and used a pair of small work lamps to fully illuminate the areas I needed to work in.

The first photo shows the small triangular cutouts provided to access these two mounting holes in the brass angle brackets. The Shakeproof washer is already resting around the screw hole. I dropped them in place with a small pair of needle nose pliers.

Before I started all this, I put a small drop of clear nail polish on the end of a wooden candy stick to secure the brass hex nut. The screw was then mounted on an appropriately sized slotted screw driver head and placed up through the hole and through the washer. While holding the screw in place with one hand, I used the other hand to carefully place the hex nut on the tip of the screw and turned the driver head to engage the threads. The hex nut pops free of the wooden stick as soon as the turning resistance is great enough. You can then press down on the open face of the hex nut with the flat tip of the wooden stick until the screw is flush with the front panel. I then placed a drop of red nail polish into the hole of the hex nut to lock it in place. I had found traces of red lacquer in these two hex nuts when I removed them last Spring.

So the two tricky sets of panel mounting hardware on the Coil Assembly have now been reinstalled. Four more sets to go.


David

[David Dunlop]

The six front panel screws were plated this morning and installed this evening. That now just leaves the 10 brass, round head wood screws to plate and then the wooden rear panel for the Coil case can be reinstalled.


David

[Chris Suslowicz]

Congratulations: it looks as though it has just rolled off CMC's production line!

[David Dunlop]

The 10 small wood screws for mounting the rear wood panel to the Coil Case were zinc plated this morning and allowed to dry after their alcohol rinse.

When I took the Coil Assembly apart last spring, I discovered the wood screw second from the bottom right was slightly shorter than the rest, but with an identical head size, so I left it in.

With the back panel now reinstalled, the completed Coil, Aerial Tuning No. 2A is finally completed and ready to go. Thank you Chris S for your kind comment.


David

[David Dunlop]

The Coil, Aerial Tuning No. 2A is now remounted on top of the Carriers No. 4 and for the first time in who knows how long, connected to a Sender on my 52-Set with the correct, NOS Leads, Aerial that I purchased a few weeks ago.

I may have to slide the yellow IDSleeve on the Leads up to the coil end as it keeps the cable from curving smoothly and may create a problem when the Waterproof Curtain is lowered. I will have to check service photos of the 52-Set to see if any show where this sleeve was typically located.

Next big project for the 52-Set now will be to repair/replace a few things on the Supply Unit. I need to find where 1.5 Volts DC to the Receiver is disappearing to from the 12 Volt DC Low Tension circuit and then get a number of physically defective parts replaced on the Sender side of the Supply.


David

[David Dunlop]

I decided to get a look inside the Switchboard, Charging today to see what else was missing related to the two Terminal assemblies I was already aware of from the front panel.

The back, plywood cover is held in place by 8 brass, countersunk, slot head wood screws that have been black adonized and which are 1-1/8 inch in length. One such screw was missing and another has been replaced a some point in time with a steel screw of similar specifications.Easy enough to track down replacements today.

At first glance inside, I noticed three of the switches were pretty clean and the one in the lower right corner, viewed from the rear, was absolutely filthy with dried oil or grease. This was consistent with a bit of dried oil I had to remove around this switch on the front panel. After that observation I suddenly realized there were no wires at all on the two switches on the right side, the filthy switch had no brass terminal screws fitted to it at all and the switch above it only had the lower, centre terminal screw still in place. One was also missing on the upper left switch. Then I realized all the brass hex nuts and washers had been removed from all nine terminal assemblies that had no wires fitted and that the two empty terminal holes visible from the front side actually did have terminals fitted at one time.

I decided to pull the filthy switch and see if it could be cleaned up to reasonably match the other three. After an hour of brass brush scrubbing with two different cleaners, a water rinse and a 99% isopropyl Alcohol rinse to get rid of all the water, the switch looked a pretty good match to the others and the visible terminals inside were looking brassy once again. So back it went in its position in the switchboard.

I was expecting solid copper wiring and was not disappointed but the wire colours were a bit of a surprise. I expected classic black and red, but the red turned out to be a rather attractive looking wine colour. Should be fun trying to match that down the road when I start restoration of this switchboard.


David