Chuck the Writer and Repainting RCA Mech Boards

It was a very snowy weekend in Albany, a perfect time for me to work on my RCA Victor 45 RPM phonographs. Right now I've got two dissected and disassembled players - a 45-J-2 phonograph which I'm currently referring to as the "Sun" player (for reasons I will explain later), and a 45-EY-2 phonograph with amplifier that I've nicknamed the "Petty" player (part of the serial number has a "43" in it, in honor of Richard Petty).

Yesteday I took several of the internal parts from both units downstairs, where I applied copious amounts of Gojo pumice on each part, then scrubbed them off. Later on I'll add some 3M rubbing compound to polish the parts up, because as I was taught by the Kieronspal DVD videos, clean parts make for solid, dependable parts.




You should have seen these parts beforehand. They were black and greasy and sticky and gunky. They don't look sticky and gunky now, do they?

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Now, I need to show you the two mechanical boards, the metal plates upon which the turntable and tonearm rest.



Here's the "Petty" board, complete with rust and pitting and those annoying white paint marks.



And the "Sun" board, with rust and pitting and gungus - and look, the "Sun" board still has the RCA Victor brand on the lower right corner.

Usually these RCA Victor brands are held on by three metal pin clips, which was the case with the Petty board. However, this one had the RCA Victor brand applied with what looked like a weld. After further discovery, I found out that the brand was being held with a backing of wax, which loosened up after I heated the bolt points with a small butane lighter. Then after that, it was a simple step to remove the RCA Victor brand from the Sun board.

Once both units were debranded and stripped of almost all necessary points (I couldn't successfully remove the reject pivot point), I sanded each mech board with 100 grit sandpaper, removing as much of the dried paint and rust and puckering and pitting on each mech board.

Then I taped up the reject pivot point and a couple of other parts on the mech boards, and gave each mech board a nice light coating of Rustoleum primer.

Results - here's the "Petty" mech board -



And the "Sun" mech board -



I'll be adding a second primer coat, then later will repaint each mech board with an enamel-based Rustoleum spray. More fun stuff to follow...