Cobra 2000 with a LOT of issues..

["Doc"Hammer]

Thursday, a friend brought me a Cobra 2000 that had been sitting in his garage for a couple of years as payment (I charged him 20 bucks) for some work I did for him (I wired a mike for him and he was short of funds)...Needless to say, the radio looked nice but he said it had some "issues"..Come to find out, the rig had been operated extensively in a really high SWR situation for about 6 months..of course, one of his "trucker" friends had been in there with a magic screwdriver too...It would power on, but thats about all. I spent all weekend fixing things and replacing parts, re-flowing bad solder joints, reconnecting wires undone from a bad channel conversion etc...etc. This poor radio was butchered from the word GO. After over 10 hours in 2 days of labor, it is on the air and transmitting, on frequency and with forward modulation on AM and sideband...I replaced a bad driver and final (c2160/1969 combo) with a set salvaged from a parts rig of mine (Thats why we save'em), several bad caps, freed up a stuck meter, lights, cleaned switches and knobs. Setting driver bias at 30ma and final bias at 60ma, We got 3 watts on AM with good forward to 6 or 7 and about 10 pep on sideband.
The radio has a bad regulator and the power supply has some issues.(it winks out and almost kills the indicator lights on modulation, AM or sideband and the freq counter goes "black"), when it operated on 110...But on 12 volts, she works great! Still have lots of work to do on figuring out the power supply issue, but meanwhile I'll run it on 12 volts...Gonna source up a NEW driver and final for it...new 1969's are getting hard to find..I do have another set of used ones as a backup. Talked a little sideband skip on it today..Got good reports on it! Not bad for a 20 dollar radio A beautiful rig brought back from the dead...



the bad final..



More to come...

[Sandbagger]

May 15, 2017 0:15:22 GMT -5 "Doc"Hammer said:

Thursday, a friend brought me a Cobra 2000 that had been sitting in his garage for a couple of years as payment (I charged him 20 bucks) for some work I did for him (I wired a mike for him and he was short of funds)...Needless to say, the radio looked nice but he said it had some "issues"..Come to find out, the rig had been operated extensively in a really high SWR situation for about 6 months..of course, one of his "trucker" friends had been in there with a magic screwdriver too...It would power on, but thats about all. I spent all weekend fixing things and replacing parts, re-flowing bad solder joints, reconnecting wires undone from a bad channel conversion etc...etc. This poor radio was butchered from the word GO. After over 10 hours in 2 days of labor, it is on the air and transmitting, on frequency and with forward modulation on AM and sideband...I replaced a bad driver and final (c2160/1969 combo) with a set salvaged from a parts rig of mine (Thats why we save'em), several bad caps, freed up a stuck meter, lights, cleaned switches and knobs. Setting driver bias at 30ma and final bias at 60ma, We got 3 watts on AM with good forward to 6 or 7 and about 10 pep on sideband.
The radio has a bad regulator and the power supply has some issues.(it winks out and almost kills the indicator lights on modulation, AM or sideband and the freq counter goes "black"), when it operated on 110...But on 12 volts, she works great! Still have lots of work to do on figuring out the power supply issue, but meanwhile I'll run it on 12 volts...Gonna source up a NEW driver and final for it...new 1969's are getting hard to find..I do have another set of used ones as a backup. Talked a little sideband skip on it today..Got good reports on it! Not bad for a 20 dollar radio A beautiful rig brought back from the dead...



the bad final..



More to come...

That's why it's good to know how to do these things. Imagine how much that would have cost to have a shop restore it..... Assuming they would even want to get into something so intensive.

[BBB]

The face looks good. No holes drilled. Freq counter & all lights work it appears. Good job Doc !! Another classic CB radio saved from the shredder.