I *think* I bought my pair from Coleman's some years ago.  It might have been another surplus dealer, but I do think it was Coleman's.  As I recall, both worked out of the box, but one had a receiver "birdie" signal audible on 51.0 MHz (the frequency I was most interested in using, of course).  I opened it up and traced the signal to the VCO/PLL section which is inside a shielded box.  I improved the grounding of that shield and the strength of the birdie was greatly reduced (almost gone) and the rig is now usable on 51.0 MHz.  I can just hear the birdie beating against a very weak signal after the fix.  Before, it was pretty strong, opening the squelch and disturbing medium-strength signals.

On one unit, I replaced the old batteries with a NiMH pack inside the metal battery box.  On the other rig I installed AA battery holders inside the box and used alkalines.  Both approaches seemed fine - both powered their transceiver for two+ days at the Hamvention and had lots of life left.  If one used D-cells as original it would probably run for weeks!

A friend in Ohio bought one around the same time, and the handset had an intermittent connection in the handset connector.  I think it would not key the transmitter so it was probably the PTT line.  An easy fix on the back of the connector as he described it.,