Philco 40-160 Restoration - Part 2

I’ve taken the time to research through a couple of online sources the prices for the capacitors and the vacuum tubes. It took some time to sit down with the chassis and the schematic to trace out all the components and find their values. Once I had that list, I went online to find the parts I needed. I haven’t bought anything yet, first I want to just do an assessment, establish a budget, and then see how far I can get without spending too much money upfront. I may even have some capacitors in my inventory at home that will work in this radio.

One of the biggest concerns I have in this project is in finding the two replacement parts on the front of the cabinet. These are the bezel and the escutcheon. The original parts were molded in plastic, but over the years, they have warped and cracked so much that they really are no good to use any more. In doing a little research on the internet, I’ve found that there’s a guy out in California that makes parts like this. Old Time Reproductions is the name. I sent him an email earlier this week, and I’m waiting on a response. Meanwhile, I’ve posted my question on these parts to a Philco forum online in hopes that someone may have spares or know where to find them.

On this forum, I’ve also posted the question as to how to repair the antenna loop. The paper/fiber material has crumbled all around the edges which were stapled to the top and bottom wood pieces. The wires have also dry rotted, which should be relatively easy to fix with some heat shrink. Ron from the Philco forum suggested some glue to reassemble the paper, but I really feel that a patch job will be an ugly way to make this work and won’t be too sturdy. I am toying with the idea of remaking this using some brown craft paper, new antenna wire and some contact cement. If I do that I’ll make a replacement before taking apart the old one so that I can always reuse it if absolutely necessary.

Finally, the speaker cone has a big tear in it, as you can imagine. So at some point I will have to pay to get that re-coned by either doing it myself or sending it out to someone else.

So after all this assessment, here’s my budget for this project:

All new vacuum tubes: $ 70
All new capacitors: $ 60
Bezel & Escutcheon: $100 estimate
Speaker repair: $ 50
Wire, grill cloth & misc: $ 50

Total: $330

With any luck this radio, when done, will be worth around the $500-$600 range. I most likely will never sell it, but at least I’ll know what it’s worth, and that my costs didn’t exceed the total value.