Ever Ready Car Portable

[Michael Watterson]

The paper caps / hunts don't need replaced because the voltage is low and input impedances 100 times less than valve grid bias resistors.
The transistors are the earlier than AF11x series glass tube with gel. Work as OCP71 if paint scraped!

Common problem is the drive wire. For solid wires or larger wires I use guitar strings. For this model I found the 100 lbs rated fishing monofilament line is fine. I learnt fly tying from grandpa, so I can do the non-slip half blood knots (that's what he called them) to the spring. I found that it was important to leave the pillars on the chassis and only take off the front plate.
I had to remove the tuning cap as it had a bad short from half way on the LO section and intermittent short on RF.

I couldn't fix it, so sprayed it (when open) with lacquer several times. The LO vanes then jammed and came loose. I used nail varnish remover to take off the lacquer and tapped the vanes with small hammer and small blade screwdriver to re-affix them. Eventually I got it working. I could find no short on the RF vanes. Odd.

I eventually refitted it, though capacitance range on RF and LO sections was higher than service info. However with only small adjustment of the LO trimmer on the tuner, it was fine on LW and MW... except the intermittent RF short was back! It was the unused tag on opposite side to wire hitting one of the LO coil cans! I bent the tag down at it was fine.

The original knobs had been replaced by two knobs that didn't match each other or look at all like the original. I took a pair of dark purple bakelite knobs (no idea what of, and only two of them) that looked similar to original except taller and deeper centre for missing brights. So I sliced top edge off them with dremel cutting disc, sprayed with white radiator enamel, and did centre plus outer rim with a gold marker. They look similar now to original.

The set works well, even getting Five Live MW during day (hardly any MW sets pick up any MW during daytime here.)

Has anyone ever made the car caddy with 12V filter, connection for whip and external speaker?

[crackle]

Michael
How about a photo!

Mike

[Michael Watterson]

Have to find where I put camera, take card out and edit. I will.

[Michael Watterson]

New knobs made by Dremmel cutting of dark purple bakelite:

Chassis. Usually no need to replace "waxies" on 9V germanium transistors circuits.

The missing serial number label would be bottom left, you can see the glue patch beside the transistor.

Crazy this didn't use a PCB, Pye had been making stuff with PCBs for nearly six years and some of the earlier Ever Ready valve portables used a PCB (the Sky Queen II). The tuning mechanism is very complicated and expensive, perhaps to reduce effects of vibration.

[crackle]

Hi
It looks similar to the Sky Leader, in as much as it is hand wired on an aluminium chassis.
The new knobs look very good Michael and in keeping with the style of the radio as well.

Mike

[Paul_RK]

And of course the Sky Leader changed to PCB construction in the course of production: I'd guess that, with circuits on printed boards being wholly assembled by hand just as were hard-wired chassis, there was some reduction in cost to be had but nothing very profound. After all, Bush were still producing transistor portables with wired chassis a few years after Ever Ready gave them up.

Paul

[Michael Watterson]

There was automatic insertion of PCBs in 1950s
Also even by hand it's cheaper, less error prone, easier re-worked etc.
The tooling actually for the alloy chassis is quite expensive.