Rig Doctors

Hi  

Are there any good rig doctors around?
Not too worried about location. 

More interested in reliable and competent. 

Or shops that do mot on old radios!

Many thanks 

John

Not really now most if not all have gone now ,there is a couple that most use now who are both very highly respected and recommend but they dont come on this forum at all they are mainly on Transmission 1 forum they names on there are Black Spirit and Cubwolf they both good rig Dr's I can fully recommend them ,I think there is a couple on Faceache (Facebook) but never heard about there work ,but these I've mentioned are well know within old school CB community.

I'll second Martin with Nick - Black Spirit. I've used him many times for myself and my mates radio's.
Top notch work and very reasonable prices. Repairs and modifications.

Paul.

Many thanks guys. 

It gives me somewhere to start. 

I used to take my rigs to a guy in York where I lived but he’s long gone !
Again thanks. 
John

John, I never realised how thin on the ground rig doctors were until you posted.
Hope you get sorted mate.

There's not many now Victor mate, use to be loads in every area back in the old days plus some proper CB shops had there own engineers, back in the day I had about six Rig Docs in a 5mile radius in my area plus 3/4 shops now nothing apart from the two I recommended ones in Wales and the other I cant remember but it's up North somewhere, as for the Facebook lot never heard any reports about them theres a alot of golden screwdriver brigade out there.

Martin, yes mate like you say back in the days they were two a penny! Ok, decent respected ones were a bit rarer than that
There were always the screwdriver experts but like you mention most CB shops had their own engineers. Just seems a shame and I suppose it's all down to so called 'progress'. Have you seen inside a modern rig? I couldn't see half the stuff in it!!

Yep it's all that tiny surface mount stuff now.

TRISTAR, I was on cb am/fm from 79 to 85, Haxby area of York, what was your area ?

LAM Communications in Barnsley does them, there's Dave Wood who does them, Richard Shireby G0OJF although he will only work on legal ones.

I was the local rig-doctor many years ago but divorce and life changed all that.
26 years later i come back to radio but looking at the new stuff i wouldn't know where to start plus i don't have any gear for the job (a so called m8 cleared my shack doing my x a favour with about 5 to 7 grand worth in it and he gave her the £250 he got for it all my rrrrrs))).
Good old day's they where back then lol.

Hi Alan,

Yes, I remember you saying before mate. Flipping terrible shame.
At least you stand a chance of repairing your own stuff should the need arise, the jobs that don't need much test gear etc. (Although modern test gear is far, far cheaper than it ever used to be!) Surface mount is a pain though, inherently difficult to rework let alone the eyesight requirements
(Yes, I know there are scopes, rework tools, etc. before someone jumps in - I didn't say impossible, just more difficult than the old through hole component days)

I had more of a scan about the old t'internet and with the suggestions already made it seems there are more repair outlets/options than first seems. Some are praised highly, the odd are slated but I'm damn sure I wouldn't want to fix a rig on a customer viewpoint.
"My mates say it's quieter since you repaired it", "Everyone is now telling me I'm off frequency since you repaired it", etc. etc. whiney, whinge....
S*d that for a game of soldiers

I can say one thing, most of the older stuff when left well alone and looked after, (no twiddling, hooking up weird stuff, running from bodged PSUs, or leaving to rot at the back of the shed for 20+ years!), seem to do well. I can only hope modern day manufacturing practices equate to similar long lives on the newer stuff.

Of course, you always get the 'horror' stories of leaky capacitors, failing diodes, drifting VFO's etc. etc.
Makes you wonder who spreads those stories in the first place?
"Yes mate, it's old, needs all the caps replacing...blah, blah, nonsense, give me your money, give me your money".....

I have a 40 year old Yaesu, apart from the old grease leaking from the VFO dial, (didn't take me long to strip, clean and reassemble for a perfect working dial!), it's pristine. Capacitors are all fine and never touched, diodes are all fine and never 'clipped', controls are fine with no WD40 dripping from them, inter-connects are fine without plier marks, all within spec. etc. Perfect working order....
I was damn lucky with that little beaut!

...yet when I made 'repair' enquiries initially I was given all sorts of 'rag'.

"Nah mate, can't get VFO dials for them. I'll give you a pitiful small amount of money for it as scrap."
"Yeah mate, it's well old, will need all the caps replacing."
"The thing is, they're cr*p. Not worth my time......how much do you want scrap for it?"

Wouldn't mind, but one of those came from an 'official' Yaesu repair centre!!!??!?!


Bit of a minefield really.

If you find a good repairer, stick with them, praise them and spread the word


All the best,
Victor

Morning Victor
Yes i have seen many saying all the caps leaking and all that but i don't remember ever changing a "leaky" one blown ones yes.
Stay with me on this one.
I am disabled back legs and also not a lot of use in my left hand (broke all the nerves in a bike accident 45 years ago).
I smoke and roll my own so my bench was covered with bent creased papers.
One lad that used to come to me on a weekly basis was always in them with his golden screwdriver and i would be listening to him on air "how does it sound no or is that better i have turned the power up to 20 watts" lol.
He would then bring a radio back saying it's not right.
So i started to accidentally leave a fag paper in his radio.
He came back one day with a radio i had done for him so i said hang on i will look at it now.
No fag paper in it so i asked him if he had cleaned his bedroom and put the fag paper in the bin lol.
Saved me a lot of time but he also told people that i did something special that would tell me if they had opened the case.
The good old day's.

Hi Alan,

Yeah, it was known as the 'capacitor plague', there's even a Wikipedia entry regarding it :-

Wikipedia - Capacitor Plague

Only thing I ever saw affected by it were on PC computers, my own Hewlett Packard was affected but HP denied involvement or responsibility (!) Typical.
A lot of 'entrepreneurs' jumped on that one and claimed it for any electronic defect.
(I have 1950s & 60s valve gear with perfect electrolytics )

Ha, Ha! Well caught out with the hidden fag paper Great story.
Like I said, I wouldn't want to be a rig doctor just for such reasons.

Keep well mate.

All the best,
Victor

glenn dog wrote:

TRISTAR, I was on cb am/fm from 79 to 85, Haxby area of York, what was your area ?

Hi  

I was in Southbank Bishopthorpe Road 

(Moneyland, Chocolate City). 

Ok, i was Legoland, Haxby area, Zanussi was m handel, brother was Major Tom from 79 onwards, happy days,

Hi Glenn
I was on about the same time. 
I seem to remember a Major Tom for some reason but not sure why??

I was on the Yankee Kilos Club committee and ran the discos on Friday nights for the teenagers
At the local pub near the Knavesmire. 

How do you like your a Grant 2. ?
I was looking at one the other day and thinking of getting one!

John

Grant 2 is ok, but not used so much these days, was ok in the car, as home base not so good, now used if i go on long trips in the car,

Major Tom , my brother was around York are a lot, was around 2 years older than you, he was working in Heworth area and near your area, and on nights he was selling rigs and few Del boy items

take care over there, might catch you on a DX one day,

Hi  

That’s it!

Rig sales!

Yes that’s how I remember the name! Lol

All the best to you guys too. 
Stay safe and well. 

John

there is a good rig doc at the cb shack in lymm services....poplar 2000 on the m6 southbound

highwayhawk01 wrote:

there is a good rig doc at the cb shack in lymm services....poplar 2000 on the m6 southbound

That has been there for a good few years. I often called in there on my way in & out of a place at, or near, Warrington that built refrigerated trailers & that was years ago.

yeh the shop is still there im a hgv tramper and use it myself when im out that way

After searching thoroughly for a rig doctor in my location (Central Scotland) the best I could come up with was a chap who did electronics repair and would solder components that I had supplied but had no testing equipment such as dummy loads, fortunately, the concern I had was just the SWR protection had kicked in and once I put in a dummy load it appeared to reset this.

On my last venture into radio I had a cracking rig doctor who also became a good friend, Steve, Ghost Man, he gave me my handle Mirror man as I clipped the mirror off his car as we passed in the street, as you can imagine he was less than impressed that some gangly young man of 17-18 had knocked his wing mirror off.  Asking how much he thought it would cost to fix he turns to me telling me last time he picked one up at the scrapyard it was £2.80, here is £5 keep the rest for petrol/your trouble.

Turns out Ghostie did work for the local C.B. store and his work had a good reputation, he ended up doing work on countless radios for me as I bought and sold a fair few and people were always keen to buy them as they knew who had given them a tune-up for me, it became a positive selling point.

It may be an idea to set up a Contact list of rig doctors for CT members as they do seem to be very thin on the ground, with the advent of programmable radios there are many things you can now do yourself but even though like myself, you may be not bad at all with a soldering iron, I wouldn't feel confident replacing output transistors or re-capping a radio for example.

Victor wrote:

John, I never realised how thin on the ground rig doctors were until you posted.
Hope you get sorted mate.

Over in Gibraltar there is 0 so we take our radio's to spain ( try explaining the problem to someone that dont speak English ) and i dont speak Spanish