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Old 8th Dec 2019, 2:42 pm   #141
ColinTheAmpMan1
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Default Re: Repair nightmares.

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Originally Posted by rambo1152 View Post
I remember listening to channel 8 and hearing some unknown serial called Crossroads!
Oh, and the Tingha and Tucker club, a strange Australian themed kids programme from Birmingham.
If I remember correctly, there is a commonality here. Noele Gordon was the proprietor of the Crossroads Motel and also the presenter of "The Tingha and Tucker Fan Club". I think they both probably came from Pebble Mill.

Colin (a Brummie).
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Old 11th Dec 2019, 2:28 pm   #142
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Default Re: Repair nightmares.

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Originally Posted by G6Tanuki View Post
Quote:
Originally Posted by Diabolical Artificer View Post
Some cracking stories there... I'd like to slightly expand the theme if I may: what's the best bit of advice as regards repairing/fault finding members have had or whilst fixing something what was a valuable lesson learned?
I have three:

{1} Don't believe the customer's description of the fault - always verify it for yourself. I had several instances over the years where a tech believed the customer's fault-description and began fault-finding only to discover after fruitless hours with the datascope that the customer's original fault-description was rather wide of the mark.
I think some service companies take your admonition a bit too seriously!

Back when I worked at a TV Studio, Management decided to embrace "out sourcing" for the fairly large numbers of "domestic' type TVs which were used as floor monitors & other odd things, whilst keeping repair of specialist Picture Monitors "in house".
It seemed like a good idea, as it was pretty stressful for a (mostly) "one man" department to keep up.

Our first try was a large 27" Sony in a heavy wooden cabinet, with a low emission CRT.

It was sent off to a service company for CRT replacement, & adjustment (convergence, etc).
We provided a "good" CRT, & gave strict instructions to not break the vacuum of the old one, as we would have it "regunned".

On its return, on looking into the tube carton, I found that the tube neck had been smashed just aft of the gun assembly.

I then turned to the TV.
Well, they had replaced the tube, but it looked like they had given up with convergence, & any other adjustments, for that matter.

About 4 hours later, I had properly adjusted it & placed it back into service.
Had I done everything from "scratch" myself, it might have taken 5!

Undeterred, we sent a small Sanyo off to another service company.
It wasn't starting up when the on button was pushed, so we opened it up, checked some "usual suspects", then decided to "outsource" it.

We attached a note, detailing those checks we had already made, & off it went.
They fixed it OK, but when it came back, we could see our note had been roughly torn off.
On their attached job docket, under "customers complaint" they had written "doesn't work"!
Quote:

{2} If you're the Nth person to be investigating a fault, always check any rectification work carried out by the previous (N-1) techies. I've seen what was originally a single fault had become multiple faults after several different people had each made their own attempt at fixing it.
Ohhh, Yeah!!!!
Quote:
{3} Don't crack under pressure: when you've got a major service/piece of equipment down and customers/senior-manager-types/CEOs are continually asking how much longer it will take before normal service is resumed, tell them - politely - that their continual interruptions are actually delaying you from fixing their problem and that it'll be fixed much quicker if they just leave you to get on with it. "When I'm giving you a progress-report I'm not working on the problem!".
This becomes much harder at a TV Station, with various Production type people wailing for, either that monitor back, or a replacement, so you spend half your time "borrowing from Peter to pay Paul", knowing that "Peter" will probably be moaning for his monitor tomorrow!
In the meantime, you try to get on with the problem.
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Old 11th Dec 2019, 5:02 pm   #143
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Default Re: Repair nightmares.

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Originally Posted by ColinTheAmpMan1 View Post
If I remember correctly, there is a commonality here. Noele Gordon was the proprietor of the Crossroads Motel and also the presenter of "The Tingha and Tucker Fan Club". I think they both probably came from Pebble Mill.

Colin (a Brummie).
Wasn't Pebble Mill the BBC Midlands studios? If so I doubt they'd have been producing content for ATV!
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Old 11th Dec 2019, 5:21 pm   #144
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Default Re: Repair nightmares.

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{3} Don't crack under pressure: when you've got a major service/piece of equipment down and customers/senior-manager-types/CEOs are continually asking how much longer it will take before normal service is resumed, tell them - politely - that their continual interruptions are actually delaying you from fixing their problem and that it'll be fixed much quicker if they just leave you to get on with it. "When I'm giving you a progress-report I'm not working on the problem!".
This becomes much harder at a TV Station, with various Production type people wailing for, either that monitor back, or a replacement, so you spend half your time "borrowing from Peter to pay Paul", knowing that "Peter" will probably be moaning for his monitor tomorrow!
In the meantime, you try to get on with the problem.
My IT-consultancy gigs included quite a few financial institutions - a 'Production-type wailing" can't be anything like as threatening as the CTO of one of the UK's largest insurance/pensions institutions berating you and telling you just how many millions of pounds of trade they're losing per hour because - as it turns out - 'someone' in their internal finance-department forgot to release the funds to renew their domain-registration [despite my reminding them repeatedly in the preceeding three months] so their customer-facing website/email was down.

To achieve peace I renewed the registration using my personal credit-card and 'normality' was restored - but in the process the domain-ownership also 'conveniently' got transferred into my name...

Another time, a customer had a load of promotuional literature, TV/radio advertising, magazine/newspaper-inserts/flyers printed, website-design/back-end infrastructure and hosting provisioned and scheduled a major campaign to begin in a few days time.

At which point I reminded them that they'd not actually registered the domain in their name.

Cue much panic! Bow-tie-wearing advertising-types running around like headless chickens. Again, I registered the domain in my name, pointed it at my servers-on-three-continents-DNS, and saved their day (they shivered when they saw my invoice, but paid-up nonetheless).
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Old 11th Dec 2019, 5:45 pm   #145
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Default Re: Repair nightmares.

The Tingha and Tucka club was presented by Jean Morton. It came about because she was a local news presenter and on her return from a holiday in Australia she had brought back two toy Koala bears and someone as a joke showed one over her shoulder as she presented the news. It was so popular that she was then asked to do a kids show with the toy bears and they also added Katie kookubura and Willie wombat
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Old 11th Dec 2019, 6:59 pm   #146
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Default Re: Repair nightmares.

Best one that I can remember was some years back when I went to help a friend who had just bought a ramshackle house that needed completely rewiring amongst many other things. His mate a few doors down was a full time sparkie who had done the power circuits and put in the cables for the lighting ones, neatly labelling each one at the ends going to switches and fittings. The guy was having serious relationship issues with his then girlfriend and decided to decamp to Cuba for a few weeks to clear his head. My friend was due to move into the property imminently and needed lights so I went to finish the job off.

What I hadn't bargained for was that my friend had thought the wires sticking out where the switches and fittings would go, and previously neatly labelled by the other guy (another "Robert"), were a bit long and shortened them, at the same time losing all the labels. When I saw this, I excused myself and went outside, down to the bottom of the garden. There I said a few very bad words, quite loudly, and then returned to the job, test meter in hand. Later on, after much crawling round in very grubby lofts and under dusty floors (it was a very old house), it was finally done. I was so grubby I had to have a shower in their newly commissioned bathroom; at least the boiler was working.

Tea was very definitely "on" my friend that night!
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Old 12th Dec 2019, 12:07 am   #147
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Default Re: Repair nightmares.

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The Tingha and Tucka club was presented by Jean Morton. It came about because she was a local news presenter and on her return from a holiday in Australia she had brought back two toy Koala bears and someone as a joke showed one over her shoulder as she presented the news. It was so popular that she was then asked to do a kids show with the toy bears and they also added Katie kookubura and Willie wombat
That's Aunty Jean to you and me!
Uncle Cliff Richard appeared in at least one episode according to surviving footage on Youtube, I believe the show had a moral tone based on Christian ethics, so that might explain why he wanted to be involved.
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Old 12th Dec 2019, 12:46 am   #148
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Default Re: Repair nightmares.

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Originally Posted by Oldmadham View Post

Back when I worked at a TV Studio, Management decided to embrace "out sourcing" for the fairly large numbers of "domestic' type TVs which were used as floor monitors & other odd things, whilst keeping repair of specialist Picture Monitors "in house".
It seemed like a good idea, as it was pretty stressful for a (mostly) "one man" department to keep up.
Granada TV based in Manchester was fortunate in having a TV Rental organisation in the same corporate group, and for several years in the mid 80s I was the one man band looking after all the "domestic" TVs and videos in the Quay Street centre.

I had other duties as will, mainly in hotels, but all in all it was a lot of fun.
I used to get requests from various production people to procure various items or set up presentations in committee rooms etc.
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Old 12th Dec 2019, 1:08 am   #149
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Default Re: Repair nightmares.

In the early days of musical synthesisers, they were in very short supply, made to order as often as not.

One day, a very expensive polyphonic beast appeared on my bench. Lid up and I think four layers of boards extended outward into their service positions, supported by bog rolls to keep them from touching.

The salesman was on the phone every five minutes asking for a progress report for his customer. Even though I explained that whilst I was speaking to him on the phone, little was being done to find the fault.

At one point, I had numeorous probes attached when the phone went again. As I reached over to pick up the phone, I caught a lead, and the whole lot tumbled; blinding flash, big bang and lots of smoke.

What was that screamed the salesman. I explained that it was his synthesiser blowing up.

His answer was that it will be on the way back to the customer that night.

Nope, not that night not even that month. No such thing as replacement boards, and a new machine was months away.

Very few semiconductors survived, but after a couple of months, it was returned working, having cost us about the same as a new unit in parts, and a lot more in labour.
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Old 12th Dec 2019, 10:09 am   #150
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Default Re: Repair nightmares.

Quote:
Originally Posted by G6Tanuki View Post
Quote:
Originally Posted by Oldmadham View Post
Quote:
Originally Posted by G6Tanuki View Post
{3} Don't crack under pressure: when you've got a major service/piece of equipment down and customers/senior-manager-types/CEOs are continually asking how much longer it will take before normal service is resumed, tell them - politely - that their continual interruptions are actually delaying you from fixing their problem and that it'll be fixed much quicker if they just leave you to get on with it. "When I'm giving you a progress-report I'm not working on the problem!".
This becomes much harder at a TV Station, with various Production type people wailing for, either that monitor back, or a replacement, so you spend half your time "borrowing from Peter to pay Paul", knowing that "Peter" will probably be moaning for his monitor tomorrow!
In the meantime, you try to get on with the problem.
My IT-consultancy gigs included quite a few financial institutions - a 'Production-type wailing" can't be anything like as threatening as the CTO of one of the UK's largest insurance/pensions institutions berating you and telling you just how many millions of pounds of trade they're losing per hour because - as it turns out - 'someone' in their internal finance-department forgot to release the funds to renew their domain-registration [despite my reminding them repeatedly in the preceeding three months] so their customer-facing website/email was down.

To achieve peace I renewed the registration using my personal credit-card and 'normality' was restored - but in the process the domain-ownership also 'conveniently' got transferred into my name...
Ouch!
No, the production people weren't near as scary & high level, but they were persistent.
Remember the old aphorism about "Constant dripping wearing even a stone away"?

The only thing at that sort of level that I was peripherally associated with, was with a previous employer, back in the 1960s, where the Senior Tech in charge of a TV transmitter installation job received a phone call from the Prime Minister of Australia, asking for an update on progress with the installation.

It turns out the PM at the previous election had, unwisely, made a time commitment to provide ABC TV for Kalgoorlie, an important gold mining town in outback WA.

The PM was nice enough, & didn't try any bullying tactics, but I was glad I was just one of the "minions"!
Quote:

Another time, a customer had a load of promotuional literature, TV/radio advertising, magazine/newspaper-inserts/flyers printed, website-design/back-end infrastructure and hosting provisioned and scheduled a major campaign to begin in a few days time.

At which point I reminded them that they'd not actually registered the domain in their name.

Cue much panic! Bow-tie-wearing advertising-types running around like headless chickens. Again, I registered the domain in my name, pointed it at my servers-on-three-continents-DNS, and saved their day (they shivered when they saw my invoice, but paid-up nonetheless).
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Old 13th Dec 2019, 11:23 pm   #151
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Smile Re: Repair nightmares.

One of my hobbies is collecting and repairing mechanical clocks. Some of the ones I buy are sold as non working.

One of my pet hates is when someone has tried to repair a clock without understanding how a clock functions. I wish people wouldn't oil clock mechanisms with oil. It would be so much easier to get working. One I had recently was a very nice 60's Smiths floating balance mantel clock and the oil was absolutely everywhere in it. More like being dunked in very old three in one oil.

I have done several which have been lubricated and the volatile part of the oil evaporates leaving an almost varnish like substance stuck to all of the pivots, pinions and wheels and it takes me a long time with cocktail sticks pegging out all of the holes in the plates and getting rid of the well stuck on muck in the pinions. Its a long job... but I enjoy it as I have a working clock at the end of the day!

Christopher Capener
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Old 14th Dec 2019, 9:54 am   #152
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Default Re: Repair nightmares.

Ah yes, the oiling of clocks! I have had several that have been ‘repaired and oiled by a professional clock restorer’ just to find it was actually someone with a screwdriver and a can of WD40 in a shed...
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Old 14th Dec 2019, 5:27 pm   #153
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Default Re: Repair nightmares.

Many so-called repairers just stick the movement in an ultrasound bath. A bit like having a shower with all your clothes on!
As for WD40, it turns parts in most ammonited cleaning fluids such as Horolene, a bright bluish-green.
Clock and watch oils are like no other as they are made not to 'creep' but to sty put from whey they are.
If you can actually see oil in a clock it's been over-oiled or worse.
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Old 14th Dec 2019, 6:50 pm   #154
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Default Re: Repair nightmares.

A strange fault occurred in my last job. I was part of a team looking after emergency services vehicles and although the main part of the job involved radio comms, every now and again we would be asked by our fleet workshops to troubleshoot an installation that hadn't quite gone to plan. This one involved a roof mounted light bar which basically followed the American style where all the blue lights and sirens are mounted on one unit attached to the car a bit like a normal roof rack. In this case the auto electrical techs had fitted a bar to a brand new car and released it for road use. The car soon returned saying the lights etc had a mind of their own, choosing randomly when to switch on and off. This caused alarm and surprise to the driver (and members of the public) because the blue lights would suddenly start flashing of their own accord and could not be switched off. Turned out that the logic inputs to the controller had been designed to use a switch panel using an internal filament lamp when enabled. This acted nicely as a logic pull down when not switched on. The switches used had leds in with series resistors and allowed the logic levels to float high and confuse the controller. Took us a while to find what was causing that one. We also occasionally had cases of the lights and sirens acting strangely when the radio transmitted due to high levels of RF around the vehicle.
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Old 14th Dec 2019, 7:09 pm   #155
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We also occasionally had cases of the lights and sirens acting strangely when the radio transmitted due to high levels of RF around the vehicle.
Ah, yes. Not a "repair" issue but I remember that back in the 80s my 'legal limit' 150-Watt 2-metre mobile transmitter stalled my father's Volvo if I transmitted when parked alongside.

Equally, the neighbours' PIR security-lights would come on and their burglar-alarm would trigger when poked with 50 Watts of AM on 86.mumble MHz of PMR signal.
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Old 15th Dec 2019, 4:07 pm   #156
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Default Re: Repair nightmares.

Ah that reminds me of an old B&O tuner-amp which switched on the diodes in the stereo decoder either with the FM stereo pilot tone, or with a bias current through the (extinguished) stereo bulb. AM and FM signals went through the stereo decoder.

So the first time one of these came in with severe distortion on AM, and everything else undistorted, it took a while to diagnose.

Stuart
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Old 15th Dec 2019, 6:53 pm   #157
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Default Re: Repair nightmares.

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Originally Posted by high_vacuum_house View Post
One of my hobbies is collecting and repairing mechanical clocks. Some of the ones I buy are sold as non working.

One of my pet hates is when someone has tried to repair a clock without understanding how a clock functions. I wish people wouldn't oil clock mechanisms with oil. It would be so much easier to get working. One I had recently was a very nice 60's Smiths floating balance mantel clock and the oil was absolutely everywhere in it. More like being dunked in very old three in one oil.

I have done several which have been lubricated and the volatile part of the oil evaporates leaving an almost varnish like substance stuck to all of the pivots, pinions and wheels and it takes me a long time with cocktail sticks pegging out all of the holes in the plates and getting rid of the well stuck on muck in the pinions. Its a long job... but I enjoy it as I have a working clock at the end of the day!

Christopher Capener
Interesting. So, what does one "oil" clock mechanisms with? What is it that makes 'clock oil', clock oil as opposed to the many, various and versatile other oils that are available? Product names and links appreciated. Thanks.
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Old 15th Dec 2019, 7:14 pm   #158
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Default Re: Repair nightmares.

Bit off topic but here's what I use on my cuckoo clocks-

https://timesavers.com/i-9995343-j-d...-oil-50ml.html
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Old 15th Dec 2019, 7:22 pm   #159
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Default Re: Repair nightmares.

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Interesting. So, what does one "oil" clock mechanisms with? What is it that makes 'clock oil', clock oil as opposed to the many, various and versatile other oils that are available? Product names and links appreciated. Thanks.
Just Google "Clock Oil" and you'll find plenty of suppliers and manufacturers.

The important property it possesses is that it stays within plain bearings and doesn't creep out attracting dirt and dust.
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Old 15th Dec 2019, 8:02 pm   #160
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Default Re: Repair nightmare's.

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Yes! there are some particularly cheap-and-nasty short croc-clip leads (Maplin used to sell them) where the wire is 'attached' to the clip by being folded-back over the insulation then feebly crimped into the plated-metal of the clip.

If you put more than an amp or so through these you get heat created between the clip and the wire, causing the insulation to soften and contact to become intermittent or lost. Cue another frustrating hour of fault-investigation until you realise that part of the test-setup now also has a fault!
Yes I have been there, Maplin, China imports, they all need to be re terminated and soldered.

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