[ICOM] IC-735 Saga and Symptoms

[Adrian]

Are you sitting down, then we will begin

I've just acquired an IC-735 which has seen better days, it came
from a friend of mine who has used it in his boat for years, it
has been sitting in his shack for the last 2 on a shelf, he is 
also a heavy smoker, so apart from the heavy caked on cigarette
tar the radio also shows some salt water corrosion (especially on
the metal parts of the knobs and the silver switches)I connected
it up and switched it on to nothing, but silence, it lit up and
showed all normal readings except no signal and sound, switched
on and off again couple of times and it came to life, albeit
a bit hit and miss, it receives fine for a while then dies, 
sometimes I can get it to work by powering on and off, other times
if I just change the band it comes back to life, I have tried txing
and it worked after a fashion, but after unkeying the RX sounded like
it had gone to AM (even though still showed SSB), switching off and
on had the desired effect again, sometimes I will switch on and it
will sound perfect, like today, then I actually managed a couple of
QSO,s on 20m before it started acting up on me, the other thing I have
noticed if I leave on RX for a long time it will start to cause problems
after a while, IE the sound will start to sound rough, going to the CW
portion of the band confirms this as the tones are a little harsh, 
however if I now switch to say 40m, the sound is fine for a while then
it starts to go as well, if I switch off and leave for 20 minutes and
power back up, all is well, if I cycle through the bands, some will
sound quiet and others will come to life, but its different each time
the last issue is that again not all the time but when I get it to 
RX fine, the top 5-10khz of each band segment is dead, IE if I tune
to 14.190 it will go quiet until 200 then come to life again, but 
its not the same all the time, sometimes it will be dead for on a few
khz other times its about 10khz, anyway, think I've bored you all silly
by now, if any of you Icom experts can give me any initial pointers to 
look for I would be grateful, by the way, I opened up the radio
expecting
the inside to be bad after the terrible state of the outside, but to my
surprise its extremely clean inside, apart from some of the miniature
coax
connectors are a bit tarnished, (not that a clean inside is any
indication
of anything)

(there is always the Bin)

Phew

73 De Adrian

EA5/G0KOM---ZC4MK---VP8COI