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Lafayette Dyna-Com CBs.
- Thread starter w6jbb
- Start date
niceguy71
Active Member
I have a ton of handheld CB radios, kind of my addiction.... and I've been looking for years... no repairmen will touch them... I have a great repair guy a few miles from me people from all over the country go to him... I always see truck drivers from Canada in his shop.. the man is good!
... I brought him a couple of handhelds to repair... he handed me a trash can and told me to put them in that.
any repair guy you talk to... they spend a lot of time to figure out the problem on the handheld and then try to find the obsolete parts ( no room for fit all parts in a handheld) .. it's always going to be a minimum of $100 bucks before they even do the repair... and most of these old handhelds can be bought at a yard sale for $5 bucks.
if you ever find someone, let us know who you find....
By The Way....... any worker will charge $80 to $100 bucks an hour... most repairs take about two hours ( by the time they diagnose the problem search for the older obsolete parts..... call you to go over the repairs and get authorization.... then order the parts..... box up the radio to send it back to you. 2 hours is a minimum
all the old capacitors start leaking after they get 20 plus years old... replacing all those capacitors is a major job.... so even if they fix the problem.... one of the capacitors may fail any time now... so you have to ask .. do you really want to spend $160 to $200 plus shipping the radio, both ways to fix it.. plus all the new parts?????
today the President Randy II FCC is far better than any of the old radio's and only costs $165 bucks and comes with a warranty!
I know everyone loves a classic.. but why pay $200 to fix the classic when you can get a new President Randy for $165 which has AM/FM, a beautiful display that can be shown in 7 different colors... large display... shows the channel and the frequency!!.....NB......, Scan...... Weather channels..... Flashlight.....Emergency alerts.... shows the digital S meter signal strength...... Noise Reduction ( that's a HUGE PLUS) it also has channel skip .... ( Channel skip allows you to scan and skip certain channels.... so you can scan and skip Channel 6--- 9--- and 11 so it actually scans without stopping on those non stop use channels ) it has Roger Beep...... it has a Compander!!!! ... it has auto Squelch...... Duel Watch...... I could go on all day on the features... it even has a built in battery that lasts a long long time and is recharged in less than an hour!!!! you can even buy a charging dock for it..... it also gets better range than any of the other handhelds out there... and is so small you can carry it in your pocket.
so as you see, very few people would spend more money to fix an old radio Versus buying a much better new radio with warranty.... unless they were crazy!
A bit of a long shot, but there are a lot of techs on Youtube that repair CB radios. (example in link below) I cannot recommend one, but perhaps you can search around Youtube for one that looks promising and reach out via the comment section or they may even have their contact info in their profiles. No idea on what any of them would charge. Good luck.
buckets garage - YouTube
buckets garage - YouTube
niceguy71
Active Member
scary to try a guy without a good reputation.... imagine you buy a radio at the yard sale for $25 bucks or even if you've had it forever.... you spend $200 to get it repaired by someone that may not know what they are doing... and they make the radio even worse... I was a member of Facebook CB Repair group for a while..... and on a daily basis they would show the radios people hacked up..... it was absolutely amazing that on a daily basis people paid more money than the radio was worth ,.... only to have it hacked up so badly they could not use it when and if they got it back.
after watching that group for a year... I left the group with the knowledge that if any of my radios need to be fixed... it's time to just replace it with a new one... I can try to fix it myself and have nothing lost other than some time.... but I have seen people spend as much fixing a radio as they could buy a new radio for.... ( usually the hacks destroy the radio anyway ) ... so now you're out all the money and out of the radio.... a warranty looks pretty good compared to sending it to some unknown repairman and losing both the money and the radio.
Absolutely right. That is where judgement comes into play. There are very few options for repairing vintage CB's, or vintage radio gear in general. There used to be a local CB/scanner/marine radio shop here in town that did repairs on premises. They've been gone for over a decade. Everything is available online today, and a lot of the CB gear is throw-away once it stops working.
As with any repair shop, be it for electronics, cars, etc, they run the gamut from excellent to horrible. It's going to be a bit of a task to find one.
Perhaps someone else here can recommend a good tech or even repairs radios themselves.
niceguy71
Active Member
no good shops will bother with a handheld... if they charge the time they put into them, people call them a crook and they will get a bad rep...
many good shops have learned that after spending $100 bucks plus to fix an old $50 dollar radio ..customers refuse to pay the big money and just disappear...
if the shop say's it will be $150 prepaid just to start the repair... again people will go out and bad mouth the shop screaming......................
"imagine that no good son of a B**** wanted $150 bucks just to start the repair ... Heck I could buy a new handheld for under a $100 bucks and that jerk wants more than a new one????
so there is no winning when working on old Handhelds.... I looked and called tons of shops for two years trying to get some handhelds repaired... it is truly impossible
I would not spend a lot of money to repair an old handheld unless it had some sentimental value. Even then, it can could do quite nicely as a display piece without any money out of pocket.
Ultimately, the OP has to decide how to proceed.
This, exactly this. I don't even do this for my "job" any more these days but even as a side hobby often , just replace it is my answer and especially on an HT.
I agree. It would be a different story if a Tram D-201 or a 60's Polytronics were the subject radios. Those are worth sinking some money into, provided a good tech can be found.
Man, I had a working Polycom II back in the early 90's that I got in a trade. I kick myself to this day for letting it go, but at least it went to a good home, namely an elderly member of our amateur radio club who had one back in the day. I couldn't say no.
Ya, that Polycom was a great radio. I seemed to have a thing for Sonar's and Johnson's.
I agree there are certain ones that would be possibly worth sinking some money into. I've got a couple of tube ham rigs I need to tear into one of these days. We'll see how time energy goes.
I agree there are certain ones that would be possibly worth sinking some money into. I've got a couple of tube ham rigs I need to tear into one of these days. We'll see how time energy goes.
Slightly off topic, but are you still interested in Johnson’s? I have a Messenger 250 that i keep putting off to the side on the bench. It receives, but TX is inop. I have a feeling its the microphone as the plug / cord end isn’t in the greatest shape. I just haven't had the time to mess with it. $20 + shipping and it’s yours.
Thanks for the offer. With the OEM Johnson mic even!!! Already have two of those (by accident). Guy fibbed to me and said it was a 223 but I ended up with that. (Long story). One is actually in use at a friends house.
Nice rig! Having the original mic is a a major plus. Wire up a new mic cable and you'll be in business. Good write-up on this model on the CB Radio Magazine site. (sorry for the continued thread drift)
cbradiomagazine.com
Johnson Messenger 250 50th Anniversary CB Review | CB Radio Magazine
Johnson Messenger 250 50th Anniversary CB Review Many times when buying radios we don't do so because we "need" the radio. And sometimes we don't even really "want" the radio, but when we see that add in the local buy and sell it's always hard to pass up a deal. The radio shown above Johnson...
cbradiomagazine.com
Just to get this thread back on track. 
I wonder if this is the radio the OP has. Cool looking handheld, especially with the 23 channel rotary selector.
I wonder if this is the radio the OP has. Cool looking handheld, especially with the 23 channel rotary selector.
