RCA 8TS30 mouse house restoration
 

Here's my latest find. A 1948 RCA 8TS30 found at a tiny estate sale in Gary, IN for $35.

All knobs are present and cabinet looks pretty good so I thought it was a great deal.

Then I looked inside when I got it home :sigh: Can you imagine the smell if it was power up?

I might swap out the chassis with one I have from a rougher 630TS Or possibly I'll find a good chassis at the ETF convention in May.

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That's a lotta tubes
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Ooof, they even got underneath somehow.
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That's just disgusting and certainly a disappointment for you. I hope you can find a solution for this issue.

Well, that's an ugly mess, requiring cleanup and rust removal. Beyond that, is there any damage that prevents a standard electronic restoration?

I know mice can sometimes chew up coils & whatnot, and that may have happened here. But before writing off the chassis, I'd at least clean out the underneath and do a careful visual inspection.

Regards,

Phil Nelson
Phil's Old Radios
https://antiqueradio.org/index.html

I will pull the chassis out later in the week and post an update.

If you want to sell the cabinet I'd be interested.

Saw your video on this one. Beautiful little TV but messy for sure. If anyone can save it you can.

Thanks. I'm going through a rough patch with sets. This was the 3rd recent nasty chassis and I'm a little grumpy :)

Here's a DuoView I opened up the same day.
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Also a Predicta I'm just wrapping up. Had to completely strip it down and rebuild. Not looking forward to doing something of this scale again :no:
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I had some time this afternoon to pull the chassis. Loads of nesting material and poop, but it's actually not bad underneath. The inside of the cabinet is a bit nasty though. I'll disinfect it and seal with shellac or something similar.

I do believe this masonite back is original even though many other examples have a metal back. My 8T241 has a very similar masonite back and it's just too well made. I suspect it was a cost saving change made later in the production run.https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...4f077401_c.jpg

The front comes off easily after removing two small wood screws. THat allowd me to remove the 10BP4 CRT. It is branded RCA Victor and looks ancient. Very likely the original.

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At first it showed absolutely zero signs of emissions although the filament glowed just fine. Reflowing the pins didn't help. I was about to give up when in desperation it started tapping the neck. Suddenly it sprang to life. After running about 15 minutes, the emissions were in the green. After power cycling, it was dead again. I suspect an open cathode in which case I migh tbe able to reweld it.
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Here's the chassis.
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Nowhere near as bad as I feared underneath.
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I'll ponder how best to tackle it while I wrap up some other projects
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What a mess! Hope you had your HazMat suit on!