I recently dug out this old VAT I built back in the 80’s just to see what components I could salvage from it.This was a combo high amp charger and loading device and would kick batteries at about 40 amps. It was polarity protected and nothing happened if it was hooked up backwards. Anybody could use it if they figured out what all the switches did. I also had a Matco charging system analyzer with amp-probe mounted in it. Pretty typical of one of my projects actually.

I tore it apart and was amazed at the quality of the old components and decided to trick the idea out a little if I could. I had a nice Wiegmann enclosure Jackster had given me and it looked like everything would fit, so I jumped in again. After considerable sawing, drilling, grinding, and cursing I ended up with this.

I’ve also made provisions to add the front panel LCD amp/volt meter and shunt when it gets here from China in a couple weeks, if I’m lucky. LOL  Some things never change I guess…

Before

After

I used an old 24v printer power supply for the relays and low amperage trigger circuits. The high amp side is done with copper buss and heavy gauge wire and with the cooling should be sufficient. It’s compact and easy to handle and operate. The high current relay on the lower right makes the switch from load to charge settings anytime power is applied and it’s fused up where necessary.

I acquired a couple of pretty nice old computers from Chromedome recently and decided to have a closer look at them last night. While I was inspecting the said computers and looking the MoBo over on one of them, with my trusty Pelican CR123A equipped flashlight, everything suddenly went flash-bang on me. It didn’t just go “poof”, it was more on the order of a gun shot in the ear sort of thing. Fortunately it blew out the front end with the bulb and heat sink assembly rather than the tail cap that was pointing at my face. The body ended up 6 feet behind me in a box on one of the shelves and took awhile to find. One of the batteries hit the wall and was on fire when it dropped behind the bench and everything else and the other battery ended up in the computer I was checking out. It filled the place with smoke/fumes and had me ducking for awhile before I could get the exhaust fans going. Bad stuff.

Basically these batteries won’t tolerate excessive charging or discharge rates. The built in current limiting of these so called “protected batteries” can and does fail on occasion. Another issue to be considered is the fact that most of your cheap Chinese chargers for these type batteries are prone to failure and over charging/regulation issues. That puts repeated stress on the protection circuit built into the battery which then fails. If it goes “poof”, no problem, if it blows up in your face or starts a fire that’s a whole different ballgame.

It was kind of funny in a way. Until my flashlight disappeared.

Anyhow, a hat/tip goes out to Chromedome for the bit boxes!

I took some time to look into some more of the old test equipment I had on the shelf and decided to refurbish some of it. I cleaned up the cases and stripped them where necessary, and for the ones that still had a good crinkle coat, well, I spayed over them with a hammered dark bronze top coat.

Basically all that should be required to get the stuff up and running is to do a recap on the individual units. I’ve made the list of what I need and will make the order shortly and start working on re-capping the stuff. Hopefully some of it should make for some viable test gear.

From left to right:

Heathkit CT-1 Capaciti-Tester

Eico 221 VTVM

Heathkit SG-8 RF signal generator

Knight KG=650 RF signal generator

Eico 950B Comparator

RCA WR-64A Color bar/dot/crosshatch generator

I had this old piece of television test gear stored and decided to give it a closer look. The case is currently soaking in a tub of water with baking soda and 24v dc applied and should be bare metal shortly. Using electrolysis is the only way to fly when it comes to stripping metal. Anyhow, I’ll get it out of the solution and prepped for painting with a gray hammer coat of paint later.

In the mean time I cleaned up the chassis and from what I can see so far replacing the electrolytic filter caps should put it back in business. I’m not sure if I want to start relearning how to work on old TV’s again but you have to keep all your options open and hopefully preserve a piece of history in the process.

Here’s a bottom view of the chassis.

I got the cabinet repainted, installed a good leather handle and replaced the rubber feet on the bottom. The next step will be to recap it.

I purchased these two Hitachi scopes via e-bay and thought I’d run them through the paces to see if I’d made a good buy or not. The one on the left is a V-422 40 Mhz and the other one is a newer V-252 20 Mhz scope. They both locked onto the audio signal I’m feeding them here and do what they were intended to do, which is analyze wave forms. I would much rather have a good digital scope that displayed voltage and frequency along with other pertinent data and the wave form, but that’s out for now unless something happens to “fly by” on e-bay. A little math and and a VOM will do the same thing of course, but it’s still nice to be able to see what you’re doing in a visual format.

I put this together for a friend to help regulate the firebox and water temperature in the heating loop for the radiators in his home. There’s a similar setup controlling the draft door on the stove and this will further help throttle the water temperature. Both systems utilize Red Lion process meters mounted in stainless steel boxes on the front end, and actuators running through a 4-20 ma loop to do the heavy lifting at the other end.

The stainless is rather hard to work with, but it’s worth it in the long run.

This is one of the better tube testers I’ve acquired in that it excepts the older 4 and 6 pin tubes commonly found in vintage gear. It worked but sometimes the meter would develop a 60 hz “buzz” at the pointer (1/16″), and do other weird stuff anytime you “clunked” a switch or made any adjustments. It did however show signs of life, so I dug into it a little further today and got it repaired.

I first disassembled the 200 ohm sensitivity rheostat and cleaned it, and then the contacts on all the other switches. It still had the same issues. So being the rational type(?), I pursued the problem and pinned it down to the selenium rectifier and a capacitor in the leakage detection circuit. Problem solved!

Here’s a bottom view of the chassis:

This is a closer look at the replaced components. I had a bunch of NOS selenium rectifiers on hand, so I decided to fix it that way rather than use a semiconductor replacement.

It was a successful project and made a nice addition to my “tool box”. In the following photo it’s warming up an old globe style 80 rectifier tube.

I’ve acquired/salvaged some pretty nice vacuum tubes recently and thought I’d give you an idea of what I’ve managed to save from ending up in a trash heap. Heh, I still have people ask me what they’re good for.

Mark Oppat over at http://www.oldradioparts.net/ mentioned that this particular chassis was rather rare and also known for having bad power transformers. I put it back on the bench to have a closer look and was pleasantly surprised with the results. I pulled the 80 rectifier tube and disconnected the filter cap as it showed obvious signs of leakage. I then powered the set up slowly with a Variac while monitoring the current on the line in and got good voltage rise on all the secondary windings. A lot of the rest will have to be re-caped and resistance values checked, but so far it looks to be one of the better sets I’ve acquired.

This is a neat old AM/FM tuner chassis I acquired recently.

What makes it unique is that it utilizes 2 6ME5 “eye tubes” for tuning indicators.I took time to clean things up a bit and then powered it up without first changing the filter caps. That’s usually a bad move, but it worked OK this time. I monitored the current inrush and the filaments lit up, so the power supply and basic circuit is intact. I patched it into an amp and got some static out of it, so there’s some hope for this one. I’ll probably just put it on the shelf for now. I’m kind of busy trying to find a real job.

The sweet potato and tobacco crops both did nicely. I got 40-50 lbs of spuds and probably 1-1/2 lbs of processed tobacco, with more tobacco on the way.

Check this out from an article posted at The Weekly Standard.

Obama Administration to Ban Asthma Inhalers Over Environmental Concerns

Asthma patients who rely on over-the-counter inhalers will need to switch to prescription-only alternatives as part of the federal government’s latest attempt to protect the Earth’s atmosphere.

The Food and Drug Administration said Thursday patients who use the epinephrine inhalers to treat mild asthma will need to switch by Dec. 31 to other types that do not contain chlorofluorocarbons, an aerosol substance once found in a variety of spray products.

The action is part of an agreement signed by the U.S. and other nations to stop using substances that deplete the ozone layer, a region in the atmosphere that helps block harmful ultraviolet rays from the Sun.

But the switch to a greener inhaler will cost consumers more. Epinephrine inhalers are available via online retailers for around $20, whereas the alternatives, which contain the drug albuterol, range from $30 to $60.

Take from it what you may, but in my opinion, this man truly does understand the markets and what needs to be done to correct the problems we face. We either wake up and accept the facts and the math now, or deal with the consequences shortly.

I installed the chassis back into cabinet just to see how the finished product might look.

Here’s a couple shots from the back side.

Dow plunges 400 points…

 Global markets tumble 4%…

GLOBAL MELTDOWN: INVESTORS DUMPING EVERYTHING

Welcome To The Collapse Of 2011

Check out today’s whoppers. You couldn’t make this stuff up even if you tried.

From The Drudge Report:

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OBAMA WAVES IN GROUP PHOTO: A BREACH OF DIPLOMATIC PROTOCOL?

That’s just goofy and bad taste any way you look at it. Looks like something off the cover of Mad Magazine that shouldn’t be taken seriously.
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UN: Palestinians shake heads when Obama demands the two sides ’stand in each other’s shoes’…

Woman steals hearse — with dead body in back!

 ’SUBURBAN DEPRESSION’

OPERATION TWIST: ALL EYES ON BERNANKE…

This has all been a slow motion train wreck as far as I’m concerned. I’ve tried hard to ignore it for the last five years or so, but the facts and the math don’t lie. Well guess what folks, the train wreck has already happened and the conductor in the caboose will catch up with the engineer at the front of the train shortly. The rest of us are just stuck in the middle of the process. The sad part is that most don’t realize what just happened in the first place.Click on the Ticker button for the full transcript.

“You cannot solve a debt crisis with more debt any more than you can fix a drunk with a case of whiskey.  Yet that is exactly what we’ve tried to do both in the United States and internationally.  The end point of that process here is exactly the same as it is there.  You’re getting a preview America, and if you think that a 20% sell-off in the stock market is what we get when it happens here, you’re wrong.  Try a 90% loss on for size followed by the utter failure of every pension fund and insurance company that has sold annuities - including yours. 

Our economic system and quite-possibly our government is finished if we allow this to occur.

The claims that “it will all be ok if we just help these people bridge the gap” is now being exposed as an outright and intentional fraud.  That fraud has been perpetrated against you, the American taxpayer, by your government and central bank.”

The rest is history……..

I recently accepted this Invacare Pronto M51 as payment for some labor even though it had been left out in the cold for two years and the batteries had sulphate d. I was going to scrap it out for the components, but ended up tearing it down and refurbishing it. I replaced the batteries and it scoots like a kicked barn yard pup now. I don’t need one and hope I never do, so I’ll probably just put it on the auction block so somebody can get a good deal on something for a change.
Anyhow, it was a lot of work, but well worth the effort if somebody can get it for a fair price. I take it for a ride once in awhile to exercise the batteries and have so far avoided running into anything and causing any major damage. LOL Actually the controls on these rigs work rather well if you can see where you’re going in the first place. If you can’t, well then, that’s a whole different ball game.

I found a reproduction face plate over at Mark Oppat’s  website, http://www.oldradioparts.net/and was quite satisfied with the purchase. I’m taking a bit of a gamble on this one because I haven’t even checked the continuity of the the power transformer windings at this point. Yea, I know it might bite me, but it’ll look nice on the auction block if I decide to get rid of it as spare parts.

I think Karl is giving us a few hints as what to expect with this post. If anything he just put everything on the table. Take the time to read this and then get back to me in regards to our current situation. We seem to have a problem Houston….