National NC98
 

Picked this up from a CL ad the other day. The filter cap's had already been replaced, so I only had to replace the paper cap's. It worked fairly well, but after replacing a couple of resistors that had drifted way up in value, and a good alignment touch-up, this old girl performs really well.

I removed the chassis and knobs, and used automobile compound on the cabinet, followed by polish, and then a couple good coats of wax with an electric buffer. The cabinet turned out really slick :)

It looks great. :thmbsp: ........But it would look so much better right side up.

It sure would, I just couldn't figure out how to do it.

Perhaps put the photo on a PC, open it with a windows photo/image viewing program, press the program's rotate button till it's right side up, save it, and upload that...It has worked for me. You could also get a free image hosting account and copy-paste the [IMG] code from there into your posts like I do (hosting sites have nice easy image editing tools).

Your national is reminding me that I need to get back to my national HRO-50 restoration...I recapped it and let it sit. It needs so much more cosmetically and electrically....I'm going to have to remember the car polish trick. I have that stuff around for my car, but never thought to try it on anything else.

Here she is...

http://www.videokarma.org/attachment...1&d=1476833290

thank you, sir!

Metal cabinets like National and Hallicrafters used can be brought back to life again with a little effort. I used turtle wax compound to clean up the cabinet, then a little polish followed by a wipe down with a clean rag to bring back the shine, and then a good, solid coat of pure carnauba wax to protect it. It now has that "wet look" :)

The trick is to use a small electric orbital buffer (less than $30 @ Harbor Freight) to do the work. I used very little pressure, and let the machine do the work. That way, there was no damage to the lettering.

Electrically, this radio needed minimal work. After finding a 10 meg resistor that had drifted up past 13 meg, I ended up checking every one and found a couple others that were out of spec. Using the instructions from the Sams Photofact, I done a complete alignment job. While it doesn't perform like my Hallicrafters SX62, the NC98 is a pretty hot receiver. The AM band performance is amazing, and the crystal-controlled adjustable selectivity feature works great (while having a minimal effect on sensitivity).

On the knobs, I used Appliance Cleaner/Wax spray from Fuller Brush Co. The band switch knob is dull and discolored, so I'd guess it's not original. I may run up on a replacement for that someday....everything else looks so good that knob kind of stands out.