Admiral Regent/C322C2 Score!

[etype2]

Great news!

[miniman82]

Should make more than that, horizontal section likely needs to be set up.

[SwizzyMan]

Originally Posted by miniman82

Should make more than that, horizontal section likely needs to be set up.

Im sure it will produce more as I replace caps and resistors in those circuits. Interesting as sams calls for 13 to 18.5kv with a target voltage of 16kv and the admiral manual calls for 20kv (which I am going for and then some.)

[BigDavesTV]

You're off to a very good start, I'd say!

[miniman82]

Sams has an obvious error, if it’s tuned up right it’ll make 22kv easy.

[bgadow]

I know my CTC-5 maxed out at around 19.5kv. It seems happy there.

[miniman82]

This isn’t a CTC-5, and the 5 is an enigma anyway. The flyback in these sets looks closest to a 4 to me, but definitely makes more HV than a 5.

[SwizzyMan]

Well after receiving my yearly dose of Pcbs and other assorted carcinogens in a few days, the filter caps are finally restuffed and installed and all is well with the chassis. I'm torn on whether to keep recapping or install the jug and see what I get with a full set of tubes and new filters.

[SwizzyMan]

Here is my method of restuffing the cans.

[SwizzyMan]

Continued..

[Electronic M]

Might be better off molding some material silicone/epoxy/clay/etc. over the new caps then paint it to look like the black beauties. Or restuff some paper shell caps of the same value and use those.

[SwizzyMan]

Here is the first attempt at replicating bumblebees. This took me over an hour to do and it didn't turn out that great. Well it's better than nothing I guess. Can you guess the value?

[ohohyodafarted]

Personally I would never waste my time re-stuffing any paper or bumble bee caps. As far as I am concerned, what is under the chassis nobody can see so why bother. Now if we are talking about a historically significant pre-war set, that is a different story, But as they say "to each his own"

So as I read this thread, it got me to thinking. Would it be possible to re-stuff a bakelite Bumble Bee????

The answer is a resounding YES...Provided you have the right equipment and skill set. So here is the procedure I developed this afternoon and you can do this if you have a machine lathe.

1. First step is to take you bumble bee and cut the leads off as close to the body as possible. Then using a grinder or a small belt sander grind the wire stubs till they are flush with the Bakelite as seen in photo #1

2. Now mount the capacitor in the chuck of your lathe and using a centering drill make a small starting divot in the end of the capacitor. Then swap your centering drill with a 1/16" twist drill and drill into the end of the capacitor until the bit gets into the foil bundle inside. Then repeat this on the other end of the capacitor. Photos #2 and #3

3. At this point we need to cut one end of the Bakelite body off. With the lathe running, I use a hack saw and cut through the capacitor as seen in Photo #4. The result is the 2 pieces shown in Photo #5

4. Now it is time to remove the insides from the Bakelite body. I start by drilling a 1/4" hole down the center to remove some of the foil and paper bundle. The drill should not advance to quickly. Advance and withdraw the bit over and over until you have reached the end of the foil bundle. Be careful not to drill through the end of the Bakelite. The foil and paper should come out as shavings if you are advancing at the correct speed. Drilling too fast will create heat and stress the Bakelite and risk breaking it. I broke a couple before I got the technique down correctly. Photo #6

Continued in the next post because of the 6 photo limit on VK.

[ohohyodafarted]

5. In this step, we continue to remove the foil bundle with successively larger drill bits. Your drill bits need to be Factory Sharp. Dull drill bits will crack the fragile Bakelite. As with the 1/4" drill, advance and withdraw the bit and slowly work you way down to the opposite end, being careful not to break through the opposite end of the Bakelite body. I was able to drill as large as 29/64" which was able to accommodate a .2uf 630v yellow metalized polyester axial capacitor. All you have to do at this point is insert the new capacitor and use some 5 minute epoxy to re-attach the Bakelite end piece. Photos #7 thru #10

I would imagine your first thought is can this be done without a lathe? Perhaps on a drill press? It will never happen, take my word for it. If you try to drill the foil bundle out using a drill you are going to break the Bakelite when you start to enlarge the inside diameter to accommodate the diameter of the new cap. This is not just a mater of removing the old foil bundle, this involves machining the inside diameter of the Bakelite.

Shop time is about 20 minutes per capacitor once I developed the skill set and methodology so that the Bakelite did not break. If you were to hire a machinist to do this I would expect it would cost about $20 a pop.

These were large Bumble Bees. .2uf and .15uf 400 volt caps. I would imagine this would be possible with physically smaller Bakelite caps as well, just as long as your new cap is small enough to fit inside the old Bakelite body.

[SwizzyMan]

Ready to get back on this with some newly discovered free time. There are a couple of oddball caps in the grid circuit of the CRT and I am wondering if I can use ceramics in place of the old paper caps or if I should stick to film caps. The caps in question couple the center tap of each screen control to the grids themselves. I can't help but worry that as the set warms up with ceramics, the values may drift and so will my screen levels thus affecting temperature. So bottom line, paper or ceramic?