Zenith X940 restoration project

[stbasil]

Fixing it up for my daughter and son-in-law. I've got two projects going, this one and the Motorola SK29! Garage is too hot for cabinet work right now, so I'm working on the electronics and chargers in my upstairs shop.

12"woofer, two tweeters and a midrange(?) horn per channel, 25ZT120 chassis. It's got the VM 1297 Microtouch 2G changer. Pretty much finished refurbing the changer, and it had some interesting issues which I'll describe later below.

[TC Chris]

What are you doing about the faceplate trim piece? Since you're aiming for "lookin' good" and not "passing Greg's inspection at the Buick club," I would be inclined to fashion a substitute and not aim for perfect historical accuracy

Chris Campbell

[stbasil]

Chris, I agree completely! Unless I get lucky and find a parted-out panel, I'll work out something else that looks OK.

When I began disassembling the changer, I found that the little flipper doohickey (the older service manual for the 1200 series that I have does not actually show that part) was bent over and rotated around and the spring was also deformed.

I was able to straighten everything out and reform the spring, now after cleaning, it appears that it's going to work okay. Fingers crossed. Can't figure out how somebody managed to accomplish that destruction!

I was interested to see that this version of the changer has several improvements to lower the tracking force requirement. One major difference is the little ball bearing slider that is under the trip link, unlike the two other 1200s that I have serviced. You can really feel the difference in the way the trip link friction is reduced!

Trip link bearing, before cleaning

As soon as I have a decent idler wheel, I'll see how well this thing works!

[stbasil]

Finished recapping the chassis this afternoon. Looks like the power supply cap cans had been replaced sometime ago, and one separate 1000uf/50v was replaced with 1500uf/75v connected with lamp cord (the blue one on the left).

Prior to recapping

I didn't trust any of those, so I replaced them, and several other 'lytics in the amp section, except the output coupling caps tested fine, so I left those in for now (the tan ones).

After recapping

Amazingly, it works, and nothing is overheating! FM and AM need alignment, and I think perhaps one amp channel is weak, but it's hard to tell because this strange volume/balance control. I had tested the output transistors, and one looks like it may be bad, I'll look into that. It's all germanium, so that will further complicate replacement parts.

[danrclem]

Nice looking cabinet.