Classic Hifi Care

I'm talking about putting new capacitors inside an old capacitor body so the chassis will look 100% original. I don't do it, don't have the patience, don't see what difference it makes on the stuff I tinker with. I don't have anything terribly valuable or historic that would warrant such extra work and effort. What do you guys think about this? Old radios might warrant such extra effort, maybe a pre-war TV. But the things we work on, are later than these things. What say ye, o wise ones?

I do it only on my 1936-38 Super-Pro receivers. So few were built, and fewer survive today.

Makes no sense to me, why not leave the can on top and put new caps underneath, new caps are much smaller than old ones. If still no room I'd buy a new can if available. A re-stuff would be a last alternative, unless, as above, a truly rare museum piece.

Here's one, a hand-built (by my late Uncle) high power Ham transmitter, circa 1948, that is now actually in a museum.
The Hallicrafters scope section is the only part he bought, the rest was built from parts bought at IBM Endicott surplus,
using a rack, blank rack panels, and Budd chassis, he designed the circuitry, built it, and made decals for all the faceplate letting etc. The man was truly a Renaissance man, he once built a complete set of kitchen cabinets using wood from IBM packing crates. The transmitter is original, so never got a probably needed re-cap, but should be done as original.

Restuffing makes sense only when you don't have space under the chassis for newer and smaller capacitors. This sometimes happens with a shallow tub chassis.

If the radio is open in back like most 1930s radios, with bakelite blocks like Philco and/or square metal cans (Atwater Kent) where the caps are clustered together, old caps are encapsulated in some type of tar that reminds me of an old train transformer or fluorescent ballast. https://philcoradio.com/library/index.p ... lock-data/

The terminals are substantial and sturdy, so reuse of them as a tie point is a no brainer. Unless you're able to cut out the leads going into the OLD capacitors from the terminals, you must heat it up and pull it out as a brick. The old capacitors cannot be left in circuit, its just cleaner to put them inside the box or block, fish the leads out of box and solder to those big terminals.

I don't mind hiding electrolytics under-chassis if there's room, or restuffing if not. On my little GE record player, I restuffed a paper cap that was outside the chassis, just for looks. I've restuffed Philc cap blocks--for the terminal points and space issues.

Chris Campbell

I tried restuffing a cap once and got to the point where I had cut the can all the way round and found the original stuffing was so tight in it I couldn't get it out. I threw away the mess, clipped the terminals from a superannusted cap of similar dimension and pit it in the position of the original. I installed the new replacements under the chassis and have done so ever since.

It all ends up being what's most practical
and actually doable.

I re-stuff the can or mount under the chassis,
depending on space available.

I find the amount of time for either action can be
about the same, unless the chassis is
very spacious underneath.

Funny how most assume it's all about electrolytics.

The optics of rare sets like what I posted about really should be brought back to year one. That means harvesting all the paper caps under chassis and restuffing with new film caps.

Most of those sets had long lived non-polarized oil caps in the PSU. Some had wet electrolytics, so those get renewed as well.

All that compared to the overall labor involved in restoring one of these beasts is trivial.

Reversing chassis corrosion, rebuilding the usually burnt audio driver iron, cabinet refinishing, and reversing what many Bubbas did to these sets.

DG

Although I didn't explain very well, I was thinking about paper coupling capacitors. I watched a YouTube video the other day where a guy was rebuilding an old Motorola TV set. It had all the original, Motorola branded, paper coupling caps in it. He was going to restuff all those branded capacitors so the underside would look original. Most Magnavox stereos have GoodAll or some other "not very good" coupling caps, so why would somebody want to restuff those or bumblebees? I reckon that was my point. I can see if you have specialized equipment like you are referring to maybe going to extra effort to keep it as original as possible.

The paper and wax versions are easy to restuff. Not so sure about bumblebees. With paper and wax, I'll get lazy and use Goop to seal the ends up.

Chris Campbell

Brown hot-melt glue works well and looks right for wax caps.

Nothing I restore uses bumblebees. If I'm fixing something that is infested, they go in the trash.

Save your used bumblebees. The guitar amp guys get their knickers in a knot over those things and will pay big money for old leaky bumblebees....