I recently bought a circular Pilot radio dial with Long, Medium and 2 Short wave bands and I thought I'll buy a 'car crash' radio, cabinet wise, and use the works inside with my dial. That's when I found this Ferguson in such bad condition, that I offered the guy £10 and he snapped my hand off. When it arrived I thought I'll find a circuit and see how the Band switch works, to my disbelief no circuit had ever been printed and no other example of this radio excised on-line, or in the many radio books I own. So I decided it was worth saving and I aborted my Pilot dial idea for a while.
the repair
I gave the chassis a good visual and found some missing wires and halve chewed components, looks like a mouse paid it a visit and later suffered a bad tummy and not returned, I can see why they might like a wax capacitor, but screened cable? perhaps that was just dragged away to it's lair.
The volume control (centre left) had a broken dial chord that connected it with the tone/on-off control on far left. I got it working again with a drive belt for a cassette deck, a little spongy, but worked. The On-off switch was open circuit and try I did I couldn't get it to work again, so I shorted it out in favour of an in-line switch later. Working without a circuit diagram was a little tricky, but if you look a manufacturers diagrams of the valves that gives you pin connections and sometimes circuit layouts.
I worked out from where the wire ends were and linked missing capacitors and screened cable to the volume control and she started to work. The band switch needed cleaning and I did the usual valve pin and holder cleans and a good vacuum around. Next was the cabinet and what to do?
Cabinet restore
Above is the eBay photo of my 'lost cause' buy
A decision needed to be made about the missing veneer and deep scratches.As it was originally chocolate brown or dark mahogany colour and that fashion in furniture died over 60 years ago and hasn't even returned for a short while I decided to paint it. Lot's of antique furniture from this period is being pained pastel shades and used again I decided on a pastel or Army green.
I wood filled all the scratches and missing veneer and even some wood worm holes and a first coat of lighter green was used and I liked that colour but some of the wood grain was still showing so I filled and sanded a 2nd time, followed by the darker green final coat.
The next job was to repair the Magic Eye window on the front. I removed the old EM31 valve and its holder and spayed the holder green to match the front. I ordered a side window display valve and circuit board for less than £5, an original valve was priced at £75, quite rare now. Just some small changes to wiring and that was done.
The new tuning display fitted across the old window, I had to cut the Bakelite pipe in halve to bring the tune neared the hole. It was attached inside with 2 wood screws and some central heating pipe insulation that can stand high temperatures and fit around the valve.
I added a wire grip just in case the valve comes free at a later date. The back of the cabinet had fell into some small pieces, so I glued them back together, removed some orange paint spillage, not perfect but will do. The mains cable was filthy and I hand cleaned it all with Ajax power cleaner and a shark knife to remove dried paint blobs. The gold metal speaker grille I cleaned with alcohol and a tooth brush.
As a final move I may a Bluetooth input the the Gram connections at the rear, the wires to that was also removed by the mouse, so I'm still looking for a circuit. If anybody had one please let me know, thanks.
