Some time ago a wrote to this group asking about
replacement parts for the S-36 dial drive. The reason was
that the small spur gear which is on the main tuning shaft
split. The split was such as to lock up the whole mechanism.
No parts were available alghough one fellow suggested a
place that might make one. After investigating the dial
mechanism I decided to see if I could repair the gear in
place. It seemed worth a try since the receiver is
constructed in such a way that removing the dial drive
requires substantial disassembly. Well, I was successful! I
was able to move the spur gear on its shaft and get some
slow curing epoxy resin on the knurled part of the shaft
where the gear was originally press fitted. I used a long
nosed Vise-Grip plier to clamp the gear in place and also
compress it so as to close the split. The split occured
along one of the teeth. This all took some careful alignment
of the parts in order than the gear was in the right place
for the dial stop mechanism to operate properly. The gear
seems to be working fine and the RX is back in business.
Since I removed it from its case I've taken the opportunity
to do a careful cleaning and will make sure there are no bad
caps hiding away, etc. While these are not wonderful
receivers from a performance standpoint they are still
interesting and are decorative if not terribly useful:-)
Unfortunately, the neither the IF or FM detector bandwidth
is wide enough for modern FM broadcast stations although it
doesn't sound too bad.
I have somewhere the original manual for this thing but
its in a box somewhere and I can't find it. I was able to
find manuals on the web but I am curious as to how the
RBK-13 version differs from the RBK-12. There is also an
RBK-15 but that has an additional, RF stage, untuned, to
reduce oscillator leakage.
My main point in posting this is to show that sometimes
makeshift repairs do work and not to give up when you run
across some antique that _looks_ unrepairable, it may not
be.


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Richard Knoppow
Los Angeles, CA, USA