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sabato 11 aprile 2015

Panasonic RF-2200 restoration adventures - Final


This is the last post (here the previous one) of a series about the restoration of my Panasonic RF-2200 vintage receiver. This is about the final cleanup of the radio. In one of posts I spoke about restoring proper behaviour of switches and potentiometers by using the renowned DeoxIT products from CAIG Labs. While these products proven to be very effective in my case, however I suspected I had used a bit too much of them for each device. So before re-mounting the case of the radio, I wanted to try to remove out any excess of DeoxIT from inside switches and potentiometers, by spraying a lot of compressed air into each device. Well, the amount of DeoxIT that came out from potentiometers were really in excess! It spread out over the main circuit board - without causing any damage, luckily - and I had to carefully remove it with compressed air, paper towel and some cotton swabs.
My recommendation is to use only the strictly necessary amount of DeoxIT (or similar product), especially if it is in the liquid form (the spray form usually contains a reduced grade of product, which easily evaporates together with solvents).
I already had cleaned up the front panel, back panel and the knobs in a soapy bath of warm water (see pictures below), using a soft brush for the panels and a toothbrush for the knobs.



Now I had only to re-mount the radio and proceed with renewing the black plastic of the case. I started with trying the Novus 3 Heavy Scratch Remover, but it did not a great job. I have found it too thick and a bit waxy, difficult to remove when it permeates the small wrinkles and scratches on the black case, causing it to look a bit milky and opaque, not that good really.
Then I tried to repair to my error with a normal, typical spray polisher for car dashboards. Boys, it did it! Faster, easier, cheaper and very effective: ideal for my needs. The results are in pictures below. Far from perfect, but good enough in my view.



That's all folks! I hope you have enjoyed your reading (thank you for that!) and may be you have found something useful for your own restoration project. These beatiful old ladies are well worth the effort.


4 commenti:

  1. Dear sir (I can’t find your name in the blog!)

    What a nice work you have done with the DR-22 / RF-2200! It’s a joy to follow the restoration process and see the final result, congratulations!

    I have also a nice Panasonic DR-22 that I bought earlier this year here in Denmark, where i live. I am a musician, so I don’t know that much about the technical aspects of radios but I’ve listened to shortwave for many years (I come from Argentina but have lived in Denmark for almost 30 years). I have a DR-28 and a RF-B65 as well, I love this Panasonic radios.

    The DR-22 is in fine working order, the switches are a bit noisy and need a cleaning for sure, I will attempt a DeoxIt application when I have the time.

    The only thing that annoys me is that the FM section is badly misaligned, the scale is wrong by about 4 Mhz, ie. if I want to tune to 88 Mhz I have to go to 92 Mhz in the dial scale.
    A guy in a radio shop here in Aarhus told me that in the old days the danish police used a radio freq at about 84 Mhz and that the former owner of the radio has probably adjusted it for beige able to listen to police comm (!). He told me also that I could set it back to the original tuning myself, but though I have a service manual I must admit I don’t know enough on how to do it.

    I was wondering if you would be so kind as to tell me which switch or whatever it is called I have to turn to adjust the FM frequency? I can see in the schematics that there is an FM “section” with several adjusting screws…

    Thanks in advance!

    Kind regards

    Florián Navarro

    Aarhus - Denmark

    RispondiElimina
    Risposte
    1. I apologize to you for replying that late (regrettably I hadn't configured any e-mail notification of comments to my posts). The best reference for your question is the RF-2200BS Service Manual, which describes how to re-align the FM section of the unit on page 10. I found a nicely readable digital copy here:
      https://freeservicemanuals.info/en/servicemanuals/viewmanual/Panasonic/RF2200BS

      Elimina
  2. Its possible to realign it back to the right frequencies by tweaking the mini var caps.

    RispondiElimina
  3. its possible to tweak it back easily !

    RispondiElimina

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