That's Just a ReCAP!

Here is a some documentation I made when I rebuilt a multi-cap for my Halicrafter's S-120 Radio** repair I did in October 2010, it was a 60-40-40-20, my stack was 68-47-47-22 of equivalent or greater voltage ratings of the original.


The cause of much power supply noise:



Wax holds it together:


Heat takes it apart:


Capsule removed:



* It took a bit more heat than imagined, this brown wax is really very hard stuff, some flowed out as planned but I could not heat all sides so it was stuck firm.  I ended up using some leather gloves and pliers to help hold and pull out the old foil caps while evenly heating the paper tube with the hot air gun. 

 A new "CAPsule" fabricated, It was a bit of a stack to fit all the new caps:



Fits OK:

Added a cardboard spacer for two reasons; to create a void space for the safety vents on the new caps, and to have the same wires and lead pattern as original, but it ended up in a slightly different order to match the new stack with no internal crossovers:



Completed new capsule, added a little more kapton tape some hot melt to prevent wax dripping in and closing up the cap's vents:



Ready to re-melt the wax:


Done:



I did not get a photo in the radio but it looks original, I marked the cap as a re-work, as shown. Although the lead layout was very logical for my stack, ground was in the center but I wish I would have paid attention to the original order because one of the yellow wires was a little shy from its new location and I had to splce a short piece of wire on it; but thanks to some yellow heatsrink it is hidden for a casual observer. 

**This S-120 is no real historic radio or anything,  just a 1960's cold war era tube radio ~ the significance to me is this is the first short wave radio I ever owned, and still have it. The original re-cap was done in September 2010, and I replaced all the paper and "bumblebee" caps, along with simply cutting these leads leaving the multi cap non-functional by adding new electrolytics point-to-point. I replaced those electolytics with the multicap I built with this re-work. 

I have been listening to some shortwave on this radio again  in my lab but am not sure some of the stuff I hear on the bands these days is any better than the government run jammers we heard on it back in the '60s.