Quote:
Originally Posted by Electronic M
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.
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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).