Zenith R511W 'Broadway' 1954

I've stopped buying radios from the USA, mainly because of the import tax and uncertainty about postage costs, if the seller is using eBay's postage service you'll end up paying postage to seller and eBay. This radio however was found in the UK and was looking very sorry for itself. The tuning knob had broken off and when posted ended up in about 7 pieces, the tuning capacitor assembly was hanging out the front hole, the carry handle was missing, but the price was right and I took a gamble.
the repair
As with all my valve repairs i check all the valve heater continuities and that the valves are in the right sockets and correct type. It helps ig you felt tip pen their positions on the chassis and clean all pins and socket pins.

As can be seen the working voltage for this set is 120 volts, so this was my first hurdle, you can buy converters on-line but they are quite expensive, what I do is use the primary winding of a Radio Spares duel input transformer, in other words the primary winding is split into 2 x 120 v winding, and for UK use you just link the to winding's together in series. What i do is to feed AC input voltage 240 across the two winding's and feed output to set from the centre tap junction, see diagram. Mae sure the transformer is big enough for the total current draw of the set.

240 V fed via points A + D then 120 v taken from B + C link an either of the input wires

I used sinusoidal transformer because the winding's are close the sound valve and will create less hum transfer. I brought a box of 2nd hand transformers some years back and i'm slowly using them all. I fixed the unit to the main chassis via an 'L' shaped bracket i made for the job.Next i checked all the smoother capacitors, 2 built in to one unit, red green and black wires, black being isolated earthed chassis wired, careful you don't get them mixed up like i did, gives you low HT and lots of hum if you do.

My next job was to fit 3 rubber grommets to the tuning capacitor, the originals had gone missing? presumably just tuned to dust as rubber sometimes does. I un-soldered the wiring for ease of fitting Without the rubbers the capacitors would be shorting out to chassis. Next job was to glue all the pieces of the tuning knob back together with clear Aroldite an leave over night with elastic bands holding pieces together.

faulty 20-60 uF capacitor, I had to use 2 'c's in parallel to achieve 60 uF

The next job was to fill the hols in the top where a carry handle once fitted, finding a Zenith logo one would be impossible and why put a handle on a mains set anyway? So i used a filler that doesn't shrink as it dries and goes hard like stone, the brand name of the filler is Milliput white, not expensive and is good for filling missing areas of plastic

Underside view showing tuner fixing bolts on right before rubber fitted an smothers on left
Final problem was the dial light, it had blown, I fitted a bayonet 6.3 v 150 mA it seems a little dull, the bulb light is directed through a small slot in a bulb cap that illuminated the plastic front from inside, just a small dot really, may try a 4.5v bulb if i can find one. That's it, good luck with your repair and don't forget to make all new wiring safe for the next repairman to handle.