Have you ever bought a used radio that was so filthy you almost tossed it in the trash? I have had a couple like that. One was a BC760XLT I bought from Brandt (See https://forums.radioreference.com/threads/scanner-characters-the-tactical-cabbie.477862/). This thing was filthy with cigarette smoke and scratches. A good cleaning and a replacement keypad and I had a decent scanner that I kept for a long while. I had a few others along the way, usually scanners with scratched up cases.
I got pretty good at rehabbing, at least aesthetically, radios over the years. I found a few tricks that might help you if you have some dirty radios that need cleaning up.
The Nico-pop Icom:
The absolute worst radio disaster I ever bought was an Icom IC-2800H. I bought it some 20 years or so from the late Denny B. Well, he wasn’t late then but he is now. Denny was a heavy smoker, and he also loved his soda pop. He always had one or more cans of pop he was drinking in the car, and I swear half of the contents of each spilled all over the control head of that IC-2800H mounted on the center transmission hump. He wanted to get some other radio as he transitioned from ham to GMRS back then so offered it to me for dirt cheap as long as I removed it from his car.
I donned a set of rubber gloves and a full haz-mat suit and pulled the radio unit, control hear, mic and head cable from the car. I offered to take his car to the car wash, but he said he had it cleaned just last year so he declined. Needless to say (but I will anyway) that car was totally filthy. I then tossed the gloves and suit into the red box at work and brought the radio home.
The radio unit was pretty clean, it had been mounted under the rear seat, out of reach of the soda spray zone. The head was a totally different story. It literally was caked with crud, that kind of sticky mix of nicotine, sugar and syrup that only a sloppy, smoking soda pop addict could bring to bear. By now I was rethinking my life choices, but I had really wanted a 2800 for a while and they were out of my price range then so I took a flyer on this one.
I took it home and went to work. Someone had told me about using denture tablets to clean jewelry so I thought it might work with this. I disassembled the control head completely. There were the front and rear clamshells with a clear glass (or plastic?) display cover, a couple plastic knobs, some plastic and rubber buttons and a few screws, the bracket and the main board. The board itself was pretty filthy with smoke and pop intrusion, but I was afraid to use anything other than distilled water on it. I did dip a couple Q-Tips in alcohol to clean up some gunk that leached in and rinsed the board with the display in distilled water. I then let it dry for a day or so and got to work on the rest.
The plastic parts, mainly the case and display cover, I let soak in boiling hot water for an hour or so and then I rinsed them off. That helped but it was still filthy. I ran to the store and bought a large box of denture tabs. I then filled a plastic tub with boiling hot water, dropped in the plastic case halves, knobs, buttons and hardware. I then poured in a dozen or so of the denture tabs and watched them fizz and spittle. I let it soak overnight and checked it out in the morning.
Morning came and it was a brand-new day! The water cleared up but there was a half-pound of crud floating on top. I fished out the parts, rinsing them off with the rest of the distilled water I had left over from the circuit board cleaning. It was like night and day! The parts were bright and clean, like they just came off the factory floor. After letting them dry for the day I went to work and reassembled the radio that night. It worked great!
That day I repeated the process with the microphone. It was one of those DTMF mics with rubber buttons, a plastic clamshell case, held together with a couple small screws. There was a plastic cover for the DTMF buttons that was jammed up and would not slide off any longer. I had resigned myself to buying a replacement mic but figured I would try the cleaning process with it. I disassembled it, cleaned it up as best I could and then soaked the plastic and rubber parts in that plastic tub with the rest of the denture tabs, just like I did for the control head. Again, it came out spotless. I rinsed the circuit board with distilled water (I had to run out for another gallon of that) and let it all dry overnight. It all worked great.
I now had to deal with the mic cord and the control head cable. Both were well caked with crud, but I was worried about repeating the same cleaning process on them since they had wires and connectors. I figured I would try it and if needed I could get replacements. I had already priced them out and found I could get them for about $25 each. I could make a replacement control head cable; I had the ability to crimp modular connectors if needed.
I repeated the same cleaning process on the cables anyway and it worked just fine. They came out as clean as new with no worries. I did use distilled water instead of tap for the seltzer bath, however. I don’t know if that made a difference or not.
All in all, I got a like-new IC2800H for $50 and invested another $10 in denture tabs and 2 gallons of distilled water. Remember this was 25 or 30 years ago, I am sure these would cost much more these days.
A few weeks later I net Denny for pizza. I picked him up at his house and he looked at the radio installed in my car. He asked if I bought a new one and I told him it was the same one I bought from him. He could not believe the difference!
Whitewall Speakers:
Many years ago, at a hamfest I bought a box of 30 or 40 General Electric MastR-II speakers. There were pretty filthy, with the wiring cut off haphazardly. The seller said they came from a fleet of garbage trucks. They were cheap but I figured I could put together a bunch from the least filthy ones and trash the rest.
My roommate at the time saw this mess and suggested I use “Bleche-Wite” whitewall cleaner on the plastic parts. If you remember these old Mastr-II speakers they had a tan plastic shell with white plastic insert speaker grills. They were about 6” square and had great audio quality.
He and I then went thru the box and started to disassemble the speakers. We separated out the brackets into one box, the screws in another, the brackets in a third, and the case backs in a fourth. We then removed the actual speakers from the fronts and cut the remaining wires and disposed of them, they were all pretty messed up.
There was an industrial hardware store on the north side of Chicago back then and I went in and bought a box of replacement screws for the speakers and cases as well as the brackets. The brackets used machine screws, but the speakers and cases used wide-thread brass screws.
The plastic case halves and brackets were then soaked in a large plastic tub with hot water overnight to loosed up some of the dirt and crud, then in the morning that was poured out. I then took a couple large bottles of Bleche-Wite and poured them into the tub, followed by just enough water to cover the plastic fronts, letting the fronts to soak for a couple hours. I removed them one by one and rinsed them off with a garden hose in the driveway, they looked almost brand new. I then put the case backs and brackets in the mixture that I had just removed the fronts from; they too came out nice and clean even though they had no white parts.
A quick rinse and all were left to dry overnight. The next day I started soldering on new cables to the speakers. At a hamfest I bought a bunch of 25-foot male-to-male audio cables with standard 3/8 jacks. I cut each in half, giving me twice as many 12-foot cables. I soldered these to the speakers, running them thru the wire hole on the speaker back, tying a knot inside the speaker case as a strain relief.
Some of the case parts were broken, the most common was a few where the threaded inserts for the brackets being snapped off. There were a few speakers that were blown out or the cones were ripped but for the most part they had held up nicely. After reassembling them all with fresh hardware I had 30 or so new-looking two-way radio speakers.
I kept a half dozen for myself and sold a couple dozen more at the next hamfest for a tidy profit.
Rehabbing my 780’s:
When the BC780XLT was introduced, it was a huge step forward in the scanner world. Tons of channels and tons of features, all in a nice compact package. I scrimped and saved for my first but eventually bought a second. A few years later, after I had already had a BC796D in hand I found a guy that had 4 780’s for sale fairly cheaply. I really wanted them and the price was right. He did warn me that the cases were “trashed” but they worked just fine. I trusted him and sent a check. A week or so later the box arrived and they were exactly as advertised, perfectly working radios in dented and scratched up cases. They looked like crap but worked great. At least the front panels were in good shape.
I took the metal cases off and hammered out the dents from the inside as best I could. I soaked them in paint thinner to remove the paint. I had a friend who worked in a body shop, and he used a bit of body filler to fill the remaining dents. After that was dry, I wet-sanded the cases and then bought a can of hammered black spray paint. The wife, who is a much better painter than I, repainted them for me. She did a great job! They looked as new afterwards. I used them for several years, mostly for aviation channels, and eventually sold them off. I doubt the guy who bought them knew how bad they once looked.
I got pretty good at rehabbing, at least aesthetically, radios over the years. I found a few tricks that might help you if you have some dirty radios that need cleaning up.
The Nico-pop Icom:
The absolute worst radio disaster I ever bought was an Icom IC-2800H. I bought it some 20 years or so from the late Denny B. Well, he wasn’t late then but he is now. Denny was a heavy smoker, and he also loved his soda pop. He always had one or more cans of pop he was drinking in the car, and I swear half of the contents of each spilled all over the control head of that IC-2800H mounted on the center transmission hump. He wanted to get some other radio as he transitioned from ham to GMRS back then so offered it to me for dirt cheap as long as I removed it from his car.
I donned a set of rubber gloves and a full haz-mat suit and pulled the radio unit, control hear, mic and head cable from the car. I offered to take his car to the car wash, but he said he had it cleaned just last year so he declined. Needless to say (but I will anyway) that car was totally filthy. I then tossed the gloves and suit into the red box at work and brought the radio home.
The radio unit was pretty clean, it had been mounted under the rear seat, out of reach of the soda spray zone. The head was a totally different story. It literally was caked with crud, that kind of sticky mix of nicotine, sugar and syrup that only a sloppy, smoking soda pop addict could bring to bear. By now I was rethinking my life choices, but I had really wanted a 2800 for a while and they were out of my price range then so I took a flyer on this one.
I took it home and went to work. Someone had told me about using denture tablets to clean jewelry so I thought it might work with this. I disassembled the control head completely. There were the front and rear clamshells with a clear glass (or plastic?) display cover, a couple plastic knobs, some plastic and rubber buttons and a few screws, the bracket and the main board. The board itself was pretty filthy with smoke and pop intrusion, but I was afraid to use anything other than distilled water on it. I did dip a couple Q-Tips in alcohol to clean up some gunk that leached in and rinsed the board with the display in distilled water. I then let it dry for a day or so and got to work on the rest.
The plastic parts, mainly the case and display cover, I let soak in boiling hot water for an hour or so and then I rinsed them off. That helped but it was still filthy. I ran to the store and bought a large box of denture tabs. I then filled a plastic tub with boiling hot water, dropped in the plastic case halves, knobs, buttons and hardware. I then poured in a dozen or so of the denture tabs and watched them fizz and spittle. I let it soak overnight and checked it out in the morning.
Morning came and it was a brand-new day! The water cleared up but there was a half-pound of crud floating on top. I fished out the parts, rinsing them off with the rest of the distilled water I had left over from the circuit board cleaning. It was like night and day! The parts were bright and clean, like they just came off the factory floor. After letting them dry for the day I went to work and reassembled the radio that night. It worked great!
That day I repeated the process with the microphone. It was one of those DTMF mics with rubber buttons, a plastic clamshell case, held together with a couple small screws. There was a plastic cover for the DTMF buttons that was jammed up and would not slide off any longer. I had resigned myself to buying a replacement mic but figured I would try the cleaning process with it. I disassembled it, cleaned it up as best I could and then soaked the plastic and rubber parts in that plastic tub with the rest of the denture tabs, just like I did for the control head. Again, it came out spotless. I rinsed the circuit board with distilled water (I had to run out for another gallon of that) and let it all dry overnight. It all worked great.
I now had to deal with the mic cord and the control head cable. Both were well caked with crud, but I was worried about repeating the same cleaning process on them since they had wires and connectors. I figured I would try it and if needed I could get replacements. I had already priced them out and found I could get them for about $25 each. I could make a replacement control head cable; I had the ability to crimp modular connectors if needed.
I repeated the same cleaning process on the cables anyway and it worked just fine. They came out as clean as new with no worries. I did use distilled water instead of tap for the seltzer bath, however. I don’t know if that made a difference or not.
All in all, I got a like-new IC2800H for $50 and invested another $10 in denture tabs and 2 gallons of distilled water. Remember this was 25 or 30 years ago, I am sure these would cost much more these days.
A few weeks later I net Denny for pizza. I picked him up at his house and he looked at the radio installed in my car. He asked if I bought a new one and I told him it was the same one I bought from him. He could not believe the difference!
Whitewall Speakers:
Many years ago, at a hamfest I bought a box of 30 or 40 General Electric MastR-II speakers. There were pretty filthy, with the wiring cut off haphazardly. The seller said they came from a fleet of garbage trucks. They were cheap but I figured I could put together a bunch from the least filthy ones and trash the rest.
My roommate at the time saw this mess and suggested I use “Bleche-Wite” whitewall cleaner on the plastic parts. If you remember these old Mastr-II speakers they had a tan plastic shell with white plastic insert speaker grills. They were about 6” square and had great audio quality.
He and I then went thru the box and started to disassemble the speakers. We separated out the brackets into one box, the screws in another, the brackets in a third, and the case backs in a fourth. We then removed the actual speakers from the fronts and cut the remaining wires and disposed of them, they were all pretty messed up.
There was an industrial hardware store on the north side of Chicago back then and I went in and bought a box of replacement screws for the speakers and cases as well as the brackets. The brackets used machine screws, but the speakers and cases used wide-thread brass screws.
The plastic case halves and brackets were then soaked in a large plastic tub with hot water overnight to loosed up some of the dirt and crud, then in the morning that was poured out. I then took a couple large bottles of Bleche-Wite and poured them into the tub, followed by just enough water to cover the plastic fronts, letting the fronts to soak for a couple hours. I removed them one by one and rinsed them off with a garden hose in the driveway, they looked almost brand new. I then put the case backs and brackets in the mixture that I had just removed the fronts from; they too came out nice and clean even though they had no white parts.
A quick rinse and all were left to dry overnight. The next day I started soldering on new cables to the speakers. At a hamfest I bought a bunch of 25-foot male-to-male audio cables with standard 3/8 jacks. I cut each in half, giving me twice as many 12-foot cables. I soldered these to the speakers, running them thru the wire hole on the speaker back, tying a knot inside the speaker case as a strain relief.
Some of the case parts were broken, the most common was a few where the threaded inserts for the brackets being snapped off. There were a few speakers that were blown out or the cones were ripped but for the most part they had held up nicely. After reassembling them all with fresh hardware I had 30 or so new-looking two-way radio speakers.
I kept a half dozen for myself and sold a couple dozen more at the next hamfest for a tidy profit.
Rehabbing my 780’s:
When the BC780XLT was introduced, it was a huge step forward in the scanner world. Tons of channels and tons of features, all in a nice compact package. I scrimped and saved for my first but eventually bought a second. A few years later, after I had already had a BC796D in hand I found a guy that had 4 780’s for sale fairly cheaply. I really wanted them and the price was right. He did warn me that the cases were “trashed” but they worked just fine. I trusted him and sent a check. A week or so later the box arrived and they were exactly as advertised, perfectly working radios in dented and scratched up cases. They looked like crap but worked great. At least the front panels were in good shape.
I took the metal cases off and hammered out the dents from the inside as best I could. I soaked them in paint thinner to remove the paint. I had a friend who worked in a body shop, and he used a bit of body filler to fill the remaining dents. After that was dry, I wet-sanded the cases and then bought a can of hammered black spray paint. The wife, who is a much better painter than I, repainted them for me. She did a great job! They looked as new afterwards. I used them for several years, mostly for aviation channels, and eventually sold them off. I doubt the guy who bought them knew how bad they once looked.
