Recently acquired a DuMont RA-103 Chatham. The cabinet is too rough for a quick Howard's touch up so I'm going to find a furniture refinisher in Pittsburgh and let them take care of the cabinet. I removed the chassis and gave it a cleaning tonight and thought I'd give some before and after shots just for the fun of it. Nothing more than cosmetic cleaning at this point, but still rewarding.
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I do need a brief bit of advice on the dial plates. On the shaft in front of the outer face there is a cap with two set screws holding it in place. I don't have a key for these screws tonight but I'm assuming if I remove this cap then the two face plates will slide off the shaft. Is there anything tricky about removing these dial plates, alignment, breakage, etc?
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I don't recall anything special about removing those, apart from being careful. Mark their position on the shaft before removal.

This article has various RA-103 restoration notes, including tuner cleaning & lube:

http://antiqueradio.org/DuMontRA-103Television.htm

Regards,

Phil Nelson
Phil's Old Radios
http://antiqueradio.org/index.html

P.S. Nice cleaning job.

These dials are prone to spilting as what has happend to mine on both the Dumont and the StrombergCarlson. I would guess that center collar is the culprit. On both sets i found that it was unnessesary to remove the dial and did not to avoid the risk of more damage, As with my sets you may find that
end part of the shaft where the knob is secured may be rough thus requiring extra force to get indicator discs off.
I had no problem lubing the gears and restoring the chasis, If it has to come
off be gentle.

P/s show us pictures of the set with the restored cabinet, nice clean chasis.

Holee Molee ! That's GREAT ! Howdja do it, the superb CLEANING, that is ?!?

I have an Andrea with a continous tuner and a metal disc that has to be removed to pull the chassis. It absolutely would not come off, no matter what I tried (and I tried it all). I eventually destroyed the tuner getting it apart. The disc had, apparently, corroded onto the shaft. (or somebody glued it with some really amazing stuff!)

Very nice, looks all sparkly and brand new.

Nice cleanup. If you do remove that dial scale, use some emery cloth or sandpaper on the shaft beforehand to smooth the exit.

My only reasoning for removal is to clean the discs. It sounds like that may be more trouble than it's worth. I think I'll try wet slightly soapy paper towels slid in between the two discs. Any one got another method?

Don't know of it hold true for your disc but on Philco radios the ink that is used for the printing will vanish if you clean it with water. Odorless mineral spirits will clean them without removing the print.
Terry

VANISH WITH WATER :eek:. Oh how sad I would be if that happened! Every one else think odorless mineral spirits are the way to go?

I did that to a philco once. Boy was I p!ssed! The black on metal black dial Zeniths will wash off too if you are not verry carefull (done that too lucilly I have a spare chassis).

Tom C.