• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

Grundig YB-400

cyberdad

cyberdad

While going through some boxes stored on some shelves in the basement today, I came across my long-missing YB-400 portable. That's the good news.

The bad news is that the batteries (Kodak AAs) that were in it when it went missing were still in it, but had corroded. The extent of the damage was not readily apparent, but I cleaned up the radio and especially the battery compartment, installed new batteries and pressed the power button. As I expected, nothing happened.

The radio was in good working condition when it "disappeard" probably about 10 or so years ago. My best guess is my that sister-in-law, who liked to help us out with many household cleaning and decorating "projects", especially when I was traveling, probably packed it up in the box where I found it. (My wife would have known better). Anyway, there it sat. Undisturbed, at a fairly constant temperature of about 60-65 degrees, on a shelf in the basement, until I came across it this afternoon.

My knowledge of radio does not extend to bringing old units back to life. Perhaps my PE-400 is dead for good. But I'm wondering what suggestions any of you might have for reviving my "long lost friend".

I did try to clean the battery compartment springs, but they were rather hard to reach. One thing I did notice was that the springs still had pretty good tension, which I took to be encouraging. Also, the corrosion damage to the batteries themselves seemed to be modestly superficial. The "Kodak" logo was clearly visible on all six of them. The positive and negative poles of the batteries showed some corrosion residue but not 100 per cent. Although that said, the plastic in and around the battery compartment was orange-tinted. Yet, I was able to remove most of that with just a paper towel soaked in 409.

Thanks in advance for any thoughts/help that any of you guys might have.
 
Last edited:
Use some vinegar or Real Lemon on a Q tip.
It will totally neutralize the allkaline leakage.
Afterwards carefully wash out the stuff with a
wet (water) Q tip.
A little wipe with some WD 40 should fix it up.
 
Last edited:
rtc said:
Use some vinegar or Real Lemon on a Q tip.
It will totally neutralize the allkaline leakage.
Afterwards carefully wash out the stuff with a
wet (water) Q tip.
A little wipe with some WD 40 should fix it up.
Click to expand...

Thanks. I've got all of these items readily on hand, so I'll try it. I'll also post how it works
 
Our friend over at mibuzzboard claims that a Q-tip soaked in household ammonia solution will dissolve the residual KOH or NaOH crystals on the terminals. A girl came into a camera shop where he worked, crying, with such an electronic device. Not only did he fix that problem, but he began a short romance with the grateful girl.

Once the crystals are gone, if it still doesn't work, you might try a pencil eraser on the terminals. Make sure the eraser has been scrubbed against a rough piece of paper like a note pad, so that no more pink rubber is coming off the eraser. That makes the eraser slightly abrasive. This will remove a thin layer of oxide on the terminals. Steel wool might work, but pieces of it might break off and short out other circuit connections, and repeated over time, destroy the terminals.

I agree that vinegar or lemon juice makes more sense chemically, but the guy swore by it and he had a short relationship to back it up.
 
Last edited:
A light touch of a needle file or emery board on the ends of the contacts may also help. I've done this with radios where there was oxidation (i.e. a form of rust) on the negative terminal (the spring part in the battery compartment) and also the metal pad on the positive side.

If that doesn't work, take the back off and check the solder pads holding the battery to the radio's main PC.

But chances are that the PC is so isolated from the battery leakage you just have a problem with the contacts inside the battery compartment.

Good luck.
 
Well, I got quite a bit of the gunk off with the Q-tip and vinegar. But it still didn't solve the problem. Over the next 2-3 days, I'll try the emery board, eraser, and ammonia fixes and see how it goes, and report. @Boombox, from outward appearances, it does appear that the battery compartment is pretty well isolated from the PC, so I'm hoping you're correct.

Thanks, guys, for jumping in and trying to help me! :)
 
Incredible stuff, Jim. Thanks. And thanks also for including the link to the article. By all appearances the radio appears to be intact, so now that I've got a bunch of fixes to try, hopefully one of them will work. I'll do the freeze as a last resort.....perhaps followed by a session with a blow dryer!
 
I would be happy to repair it for you - if you can't get it working. I charge a very nominal fee to fellow radio enthusiasts just to keep from being inundated with radios. Not to make money or a living.
 
rbrucecarter5 said:
I would be happy to repair it for you - if you can't get it working. I charge a very nominal fee to fellow radio enthusiasts just to keep from being inundated with radios. Not to make money or a living.
Click to expand...

Thanks, Bruce. I was actually thinking that I might approach you if things come to that. I haven't had a chance to try the latest round of suggestions because I've been involved in several projects these last few days, and now I'm approaching what will be a busy mother's day weekend. I probably won't be able to turn my attention to the radio until next week. As stated previously, I'll keep everyone....including you....updated on my progress.
 
Rather than freeze your radio, clean the contacts as well as you can, until you see metal. If that doesn't work, take the back off, and hit the negative terminal (where the negative's spring connects with the PCB) with some solder -- or just reheat it.

I've had two radios (my Sangean ATS909/DX-398 and my Sony SRF-42) that went intermittent because the negative spring terminal weakened the solder pad on the radio's PCB. So I think it's fairly common. The springs tend to push on the solder connection over time. If they didn't get quite enough solder on there at the factory, maybe some of them work loose. Either way, both of my radios I just mentioned work fine now. It was an easy fix. Hardest part was getting the back off.

If you don't feel comfortable trying that, then I'm sure Mr. Carter could fix it.
 
Thanks, boombox, and thanks again everyone else. As expected, I was busy with mother's day family stuff over the weekend, and now I'm up against a May 15 deadline to get some annual legal stuff done. So I haven't gotten to the radio for a few days. I'll see if I can get to it this week. I'm in no rush, but I would like to have it up and running next month when I'm going to be spending a week in Tuscany (Northern Italy). We'll be a rural area, so I'm hoping it'll be noise free and conducive to DX. If I can't get the YB going, I'll bring along the ATS-505 which is a reasonable substitute.

Anyway, I can see metal on the springs and other contacts, so I'm starting to wonder if a solder pad issue could indeed be the problem. If the emery board treatment, pencil eraser, and ammonia don't solve the problem, before I take Bruce up on his kind offer, I think I'll have a conversation with my wife's brother, who will be with us on Saturday. He's a ham, he sells two-way communication equipment to police, fire, hospitals, etc., and is more comfortable with a soldering iron than I am. In fact, he has a soldering station in his ham shack. So if that's the issue, my guess is that he could fix it, and he's only a half hour away from me. I don't know why I didn't think of him sooner.

In any case, I'll keep you posted. (And yes, I'll report next month on whatever DXing in Italy turns up. My wife can have the wine and cheese....I'll take the DX!)
 
Bruce does a good job with repairing...I know this, because my Radio Shack DX-402 is on its way to leaving Houston for my place...with new filter mods on AM/FM and a much better speaker (Mine was defective in some way). He would be happy to help you with the YB400. That's why I try to keep batteries OUT of radios I am not using. And I always check the expiration dates on the batteries. If the exp. date is 2013, I wouldn't put it in my G5, of course.
 
crainbebo said:
Bruce does a good job with repairing...I know this, because my Radio Shack DX-402 is on its way to leaving Houston for my place...with new filter mods on AM/FM and a much better speaker (Mine was defective in some way). He would be happy to help you with the YB400. That's why I try to keep batteries OUT of radios I am not using. And I always check the expiration dates on the batteries. If the exp. date is 2013, I wouldn't put it in my G5, of course.
Click to expand...

I remember your experience with Bruce repairing a radio of yours a while back. I'd have no hesitation whatsoever about sending the YB to him and gladly paying for it if I can't solve the problem myself or if my brother-in-law can't do it. Basically, I'd just as soon avoid having to ship it somewhere if I don't have to. As for the batteries, I always make it a point to remove them if I can when I know a radio won't be used for a while. But in this case, the radio was lost unexpectedly. I had no clue that it would go missing.
 
Just thought I'd pop in here for a quick update... No progress to report yet.

I'm putting the project on hold for a while because I'm leaving Friday (20th) for a long week on the North Carolina coast. Just across the state line from the Myrtle Beach area. I've been through the area once, but have never stayed there, so I'm looking forward to see what sort of DX turns up there. As always, I'll report anything that might be of interest to you guys. I'm particularly curious to find out if anything from NYC is daytime audible there.
 
cyberdad said:
Just thought I'd pop in here for a quick update... No progress to report yet.

I'm putting the project on hold for a while because I'm leaving Friday (20th) for a long week on the North Carolina coast. Just across the state line from the Myrtle Beach area. I've been through the area once, but have never stayed there, so I'm looking forward to see what sort of DX turns up there. As always, I'll report anything that might be of interest to you guys. I'm particularly curious to find out if anything from NYC is daytime audible there.
Click to expand...

Thanks Cyberdad. I'll be very interested to find out if you can hear any NYC or any other northeast blowtorches from there.
 
radioman148 said:
Thanks Cyberdad. I'll be very interested to find out if you can hear any NYC or any other northeast blowtorches from there.
Click to expand...

I'll also be looking for WQAM and the other usual suspects from that direction. If anything of note turns up, I'll start another thread, rather than hijack my own! :)
 
Another reason to freeze the radio would be so that someone can thaw it out after a fix will have been discovered.
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom