Renovation of an old AR88 Receiver

Recently our Society was given some equipment by the widow of a radio amateur who had passed away, Mr. Keen G3MYE, who lived near Banbury, . One of the items given was a a very dilapidated AR88D receiver. It was in a sad state, it apparently had been stored in an outside shed, both the chassis and case were corroded. The wiring and components, in particular capacitors, required replacing and at first sight it was only fit for the "skip". That was until our mechanical/electrical wizard, Colin G1PCU had a look at it.

	Colin decided that he would take it under his wing and try to make something of it. Here in Fig 1 we see the original state of the case. Colin completely stripped down the whole receiver, taking every component, including valve bases out, until the chassis was bare and could then be cleaned of corrosion and re-finished.
Fig 1.
	The front panel! It looks a bit sick here--It's made of very thick metal so it's no wonder the whole receiver turns out to be so heavy!!
	Before Colin could really start however there was a lot of paperwork to do. He drew out a full size plan of the chassis and listed all valve sockets/pins so that once the re-wiring started he could check off (tick) connections as they were made. Clearly he has spent much time at the drawing board, the results shown in Fig2.
Fig 2.
	Drawing out a full size plan of the chassis enabled Colin to make a "false" replica chassis, with flattened sides, Fig. 3. This enabled him to mount components such as valve bases in the correct positions and to start wiring up in the same way as was originally done, in harness form. This is still in process, but once completed, all will be removed and will fit directly into the real chassis of the receiver.

Fig 3.
	In Fig 4, we see the underside view of the main chassis, now cleaned up. The very large hole takes the RF unit with its tuning capacitors separately boxed on top. The holes at the bottom right take the mains transformer and chokes with large smoothing capacitors at bottom left.

Fig 4.
	Fig 5, shows some of the bits and pieces from the disassembled receiver, Gearing and flywheel for the tuning capacitors, valves, dials, knobs etc.
Fig 5.
	Here we see in Fig 6 the IF transformers and power supply components mounted on the cleaned up chassis. Colin had to remove all the IF cans and clean up coils etc. inside each one.

Fig 6.
	In Fig 7 we see the RF section this fits into the large hole in the chassis as shown in Fig 6.

Fig 7.
	Lastly here is the man himself-- looking happy, despite all the work still to do on this project!! He is also looking in the future to possibly renovate a CR150 receiver that is in a similar condition!!!

Fig 8.

The renovation work is still ongoing and it is hoped to bring "Part 2" to you when the work is completed---watch this space!

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Renovation of an old AR88 Receiver. -----Part 1