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Had a real 'oh no' moment with a vintage radio in my garage yesterday
I was working on this old Zenith Trans-Oceanic, trying to get the shortwave bands back. I had the chassis out and was checking the IF cans, and my probe slipped. I heard a tiny pop and saw a wisp of smoke from a little paper capacitor near the oscillator coil. My heart just sank, thinking I'd fried a part that's a pain to find. I shut it all down, took a breath, and grabbed my multimeter. I traced the circuit and found the cap had shorted, but thankfully it was just a standard 0.01uF 600V coupling cap. I had a modern replacement in my parts bin. After about 20 minutes of careful soldering to not mess up the old board, I powered it back up. The static came through the speaker, and when I tuned it, I actually picked up a faint weather band. Has anyone else had a close call like that with old, fragile parts and managed to save it?
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terry_wood515mo ago
That's actually a pretty common failure point in those old sets.
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simonb925mo ago
Consider how that pop might have saved you future trouble. That old paper cap was a ticking time bomb and your probe just set it off early. Replacing it now prevents a worse failure later.
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