Restoration of our 1000-Z Zenith Stratosphere
Pictures of the radio at the beginning                                                                                         And one AFTER picture Cabinet still needs a bit done to it yet.

              

Notice on the Amp Chassis the Non-Original Electrolitic Capacitors and the hole plugs where the other three Litics should be... someplace in its past
the 6 electrolitics were replaced with 3 double litics plugged into bakelite sockets. These will be removed and 6 litics will be installed to put it
all back into original condition.

Main Radio Chassis. Chrome is all good on the chassis. Three of the lamps have been replaced with wrong bulbs.

Chassis Underside Prior to replacing all the old capacitors..

OK Now for the AFTER Replacing the old capacitors .... Lets see if you can tell the difference...

 Old capacitor in the process of being rebuilt.

and here is one completed

The Electrolitcs for the Amp Power Supply Chassis... wrong ones were in it when radio was purchased.Below are the ones that are correct
Electrolitics for this radio...
First the NOS cans were taken apart and old guts removed.

Next the new Guts for the Cans.... these are 33 Mfd @ 450 in series to give us 16 Mfd @ 900 volts... original
Zenith caps were supposed to be Five of them 16 Mfd at 500 volts and one at 4 Mfd 500 volts. One of the
replacement sets of guts is a pair of 10 Mfd @450V in series to give us a 5 Mfd @900 volts. That is in
Series Two of the Zenith Stratospere radios.... that is the series this radio came from...

And finally the new guts installed into the empty cans... ready for installing into the Amp Supply Chassis...

Amplifier Power Supply chassis all completed.

And With all the tubes in it...

Speakers and Amp installed back into the cabinet

And now the Main Radio Chassis is all cleaned and looking good! Carefully wiped down with a damp cloth to remove 70 years worth of dust. Dial all
disassembled,cleaned and reinstalled ... and YES IT LIVES ONCE AGAIN... the radio is playing in the following two pictures.

Next it needs to be aligned and some control cleaning. Shortly it will be ready to go back into the cabinet.

Our Stratosphere complete with "The REAL STRAT CAT"

Yes that is "Baby Strat" who is now a rather large Manx Cat.

Some people asked us what we like about Florida?
SunSet view from our place in Florida