[Milsurplus] contact cleaners; vibrator contacts*

Sun, 5 Oct 2003 13:00:19 EDT

I've done well over 100 with the lightbulb method, with three or four 
failures.  One or two that never did start, one that finally started but sometimes 
had to be thumped to make it work, and one that started, ran a few minutes, and 
then suddenly welded the coil contact (the last one was NOSB, so it wasn't 
something caused by service history).  I have opened up a few, which isn't too 
difficult but is time consuming if you plan to put it back together.  The only 
ones I had trouble with while trying to open were some VB-5's.  The aluminum 
was brittle and tended to crack rather than bend.  This was before I learned of 
the lightbulb trick.  Unfortunate, as VB-5's are as rare as VB-12's.

In a message dated 10/5/2003 11:48:13 AM Central Daylight Time, 
[email protected] writes: 
> I've had a good success rate waking up old vibrators with 
> the 117VAC + lightbulb.  (About 7 for 7 currently)  Of 
> course, it's not going to fix a unit with a lot of hours on 
> it, or one that's suffered damage from running in a faulty 
> circuit.  (A bad or missing "buffer" cap, the high-voltage 
> one across the HV secondary, will cause the points to burn 
> in short order.  Replace it out of hand.)  I'd only open up 
> a vibrator as a last resort.  I'd most likely cobble up some 
> solid state widget first.

Robert Downs - Houston
<http://www.wa5cab.com>
<[email protected]>

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