Dear Rob, Just today I saw this post. It was actually brought to my attention by Manuel Caldeira who also has an amazing page about restoring these beauties. Let me share with you and others all I did on my Grundig Satellit 2400: Here is the complete list of problems and repairs on my Grundig Satellit 2400. Long hours studying, learning and looking for causes: - Full recap of all electrolytic capacitors on power supply, audio amplifier, preamplifier, tuner board, antenna circuit and SSB board. It was a pain in the neck to replace some of the caps. Replacing the caps on the power supply and audio boards made the sound clean, distortion free with great bass. - Replacement of 4 transistors in the AM and circuit (pian in the neck too). Gain was very low. - Resolder of many joints due to suspect of bad solder joints/oxidation - Repair of the SSB board with replacement of the 3 transistors. Turns out the problem was just a bad solder joint in one of the legs of one transistor that made the SSB board to work intermittently. - cleaning of all switches, buttons and moving parts. On one of the switches actually had to drill a small hole to make a good clean inside. - Really high noise in MW, LW and K1 bands. There were 3 bad solder joints on the poles where the ferrite antenna connects. - to do the above I had to cut a part of the plastic chassis to properly reach the joints. During this, I accidentally cutted the tuning dial cord!!! Fortunately I had a spare. Another pain in the neck as I never did something similar before. - The K4 band, from 13Mhz to 18Mhz had a capacitor bypassing the whole antenna circuit. This means I couldn´t tune the whole circuit properly (oscillator and antenna circuit). Managed to rebuild the whole band circuit with spares from a 2nd unit that I have for spares. The most difficult component to replace was the variable inductor as it's pretty fragile and more than 40 years old. - Replacement of the volume potenciometer. It's a double potenciometer that had a problem. Radio was playing loud from left speaker even with volume on minimum. - S-meter was not working properly. With was always on full scale with a very high, permanent tension. Had to cut a resistor that comes for the circuit reponsible for charging the optional rechargeable battery. - Full AM alignment - Fixed the broken SSB knob - replacement of two light bulbs (actually did this before) I also had a very low gain on AM. I ended up fixing that problem by replacing T201 and T202. AM gain went back to normal values. My radio still has very high noise on LW and MW bands but as I don't to them, I'm not really worried.I have very strong noise, no stations, basically. Hope this helps somehow. Cheers from Lisbon. Andre Antunes
Wow ! Dude, that is some serious dedication. Reading this, I decided I would not pull the trigger myself as it seems this radio would need help from a knowledgeble owner, which I’m not. It’s à pitty though, they are gorgeous on top of being excellent, when working.
That’s absolutely brilliant Rod. Watching a genius at work is impressive and a great honour but on a personal level it means so much and a huge Thank You. An absolute gentleman!
Well done . Lovely radio but what a nightmare to work on . I am fine with anything with glowing valves in but those things scare the life out of me !! I always enjoy your uploads . Best wishes to you .
Rod Great to see that you got as far as getting the FM to work. As you say the sound when working is so good it is worth the effort. You could always have added a bluetooth board to increase the usefullness of the radio. Your efforts look much the same as the nightmares I have had with mine. I too had problems with the tuning condenser potentiometer which had deteriorated and was not contacting with all the 3 pick up points. I tried using track repair paint but the result was still not great. Luckily I had a spare condenser. I share your comments about the access to the main board. I even considered machining away part of the plastic chassis to gain access to a component! My 2400 was a real basket case and was riddled with faults. I may just beat me. John
Fine radio and a good job on getting it working again, but I'm not sure the WD40 fix on the tuning condenser will be a long term fix. The WD40 will sooner or later dry up and then it will get stuck again. It's actually better to heat the shaft to get it loose (it's stuck in old dry grease), and then remove it and clean it and lubricate it with new grease.
It’s gorgeous! It looks coming right out of an airliner cockpit. How would it compare to say the Sony ICF2010d from the same era if memory serves me well?
Those are really frustrating radios to get to the boards, but at least the FM makes it useable. Well done.
Dear Rob, Just today I saw this post. It was actually brought to my attention by Manuel Caldeira who also has an amazing page about restoring these beauties.
Let me share with you and others all I did on my Grundig Satellit 2400:
Here is the complete list of problems and repairs on my Grundig Satellit 2400. Long hours studying, learning and looking for causes:
- Full recap of all electrolytic capacitors on power supply, audio amplifier, preamplifier, tuner board, antenna circuit and SSB board. It was a pain in the neck to replace some of the caps. Replacing the caps on the power supply and audio boards made the sound clean, distortion free with great bass.
- Replacement of 4 transistors in the AM and circuit (pian in the neck too). Gain was very low.
- Resolder of many joints due to suspect of bad solder joints/oxidation
- Repair of the SSB board with replacement of the 3 transistors. Turns out the problem was just a bad solder joint in one of the legs of one transistor that made the SSB board to work intermittently.
- cleaning of all switches, buttons and moving parts. On one of the switches actually had to drill a small hole to make a good clean inside.
- Really high noise in MW, LW and K1 bands. There were 3 bad solder joints on the poles where the ferrite antenna connects.
- to do the above I had to cut a part of the plastic chassis to properly reach the joints. During this, I accidentally cutted the tuning dial cord!!! Fortunately I had a spare. Another pain in the neck as I never did something similar before.
- The K4 band, from 13Mhz to 18Mhz had a capacitor bypassing the whole antenna circuit. This means I couldn´t tune the whole circuit properly (oscillator and antenna circuit). Managed to rebuild the whole band circuit with spares from a 2nd unit that I have for spares. The most difficult component to replace was the variable inductor as it's pretty fragile and more than 40 years old.
- Replacement of the volume potenciometer. It's a double potenciometer that had a problem. Radio was playing loud from left speaker even with volume on minimum.
- S-meter was not working properly. With was always on full scale with a very high, permanent tension. Had to cut a resistor that comes for the circuit reponsible for charging the optional rechargeable battery.
- Full AM alignment
- Fixed the broken SSB knob
- replacement of two light bulbs (actually did this before)
I also had a very low gain on AM. I ended up fixing that problem by replacing T201 and T202. AM gain went back to normal values.
My radio still has very high noise on LW and MW bands but as I don't to them, I'm not really worried.I have very strong noise, no stations, basically.
Hope this helps somehow.
Cheers from Lisbon.
Andre Antunes
Wow ! Dude, that is some serious dedication. Reading this, I decided I would not pull the trigger myself as it seems this radio would need help from a knowledgeble owner, which I’m not. It’s à pitty though, they are gorgeous on top of being excellent, when working.
That’s absolutely brilliant Rod. Watching a genius at work is impressive and a great honour but on a personal level it means so much and a huge Thank You. An absolute gentleman!
Phew ! What a labour of love.
Well done . Lovely radio but what a nightmare to work on . I am fine with anything with glowing valves in but those things scare the life out of me !! I always enjoy your uploads . Best wishes to you .
Rod
Great to see that you got as far as getting the FM to work. As you say the sound when working is so good it is worth the effort. You could always have added a bluetooth board to increase the usefullness of the radio. Your efforts look much the same as the nightmares I have had with mine. I too had problems with the tuning condenser potentiometer which had deteriorated and was not contacting with all the 3 pick up points. I tried using track repair paint but the result was still not great. Luckily I had a spare condenser. I share your comments about the access to the main board. I even considered machining away part of the plastic chassis to gain access to a component! My 2400 was a real basket case and was riddled with faults. I may just beat me. John
Fine radio and a good job on getting it working again,
but I'm not sure the WD40 fix on the tuning condenser will be a long term fix.
The WD40 will sooner or later dry up and then it will get stuck again.
It's actually better to heat the shaft to get it loose (it's stuck in old dry grease),
and then remove it and clean it and lubricate it with new grease.
This required some engineering!
Well done!
Congrats on getting it going Rod. Pity the AM doesn't work better. :)
Respect 🎉
Nice job, pity about the AM
It’s gorgeous! It looks coming right out of an airliner cockpit. How would it compare to say the Sony ICF2010d from the same era if memory serves me well?
the tuning cap should read infinity ohms not zero,zero is a dead short!.