Royce 1-632

[bobdole369]

Picked this guy (Royce 1-632) for a song off ebay and he works to talk, but there is def something up with the AGC I think. It's like the ocean, audio will get really really loud and then slowly come back down until nothing is heard. No real pattern just sort of a long slow random up and down.

Anyone know offhand where I can get schematics? How about what each of the variables inside do? I found VR8 I thnk thats modulation and VR2 is smeter cal.

I have to replace them though since 1977 (when the radio was built) they've seen better days .

[TheCBDoctor]

Hi bobdole369,

I haven't seen a Royce 1-632 in 15 years. I don't see any listing for a service manual in Sams Photo Facts. If I remember correctly the radio has a couple of boards in it that are mounted vertically on the main board. This has always been a problem with that radio. The vibration of being mounted in vehicles causes solder breaks where the vertical board is mounted to the main board,

When there were some still in circulation the problems I encountered always came back to the vertically mounted boards. Try to solder the connections of these boards along the points where they are connected to the main board. This solved most problems 75% of the time. The radio was destined to a short production run due to the engineering. Can you post a photo of the inside of the radio so I may see if I am talking about the same radio I remember.

Until I see the inside of the radio this about all the information I can give to you at the moment. Try soldering the board and let us know if the problem gets cured. That is where I would start.

Good luck,

[443 Arizona]

welcome bobdole369, i would clean the internals real well, traces on the board as well as dust/crap in general have been culprits of that dilema.
the royce's that i have had did not like to be tweaked to maximum, just when i thought i had it peaked, i bumped it a little more and it went out of tune ,,,then it took hours to get it back.
say,, are you from kansas?

[bobdole369]

Hey thanks for the tips guys. I really appreciate it. I'm a ham too but do find myself drifting to 11 meter often. I like working skip - and as the sunspot cycle starts to get exciting again I gotta do something in my 4 wheeler on the way to work in traffic right?

No I'm not in Kansas - I live down in sunny south FL - Fort Lauderdale specifically. The name comes form the 1996 presidential election and the Cambodian refugee owners of a donut shop in which I worked. Long story. Actually thats most of it.

I did clean the bejesus out of the rig, the whole thing was pretty dusty and grimy but some degreaser and contact cleaner and a brush got most of it. If you look at these pics you will see 2 bridges made of resistor leads that I made. This is right on the RF amp connecting q1 to the relay, and also the feedback from q3 (AGC). Its an invisible fracture, I found it by tapping the board and noticed that the radio came alive (actually scared the **Censored** outta me when I touched the relay RL1 input side). Seems the connection was high resistance and as the radio warmed up, cooled down it owuld change resistance. I also replaced VR7 and VR5 (ssb power and modulation), threw an antenna on it in the shop and quickly tried to peak based on the service manual (t1, t2, t3, t8). I didn't absolutely max it out either, I backed her off a bit. Thats been my experience too - its better to be just a little bit off peak.

I'm fairly surprised at how easy it was to find stuff on CB gear in general. VKHAM has the schematic and a 9 page service manual telling you exactly how to peak and tune this guy, along with (gasp!) a voltage table of all the semiconductors! WOW!

When I worked in electronics tech bench repair on an assembly line - that was my most valuable tool - my pre-made (I had to build it, the engineers who designed the devices had no idea how to troubleshoot and fix the circuits themselves) voltage table!

Well I'd post pics but I can't seem to use img or photobucket.

Wait looks lik theres an upload attachment I'll try.
Nope. I have a photobucket if yall want. Dunno if its public though.

[wyatt knight]

Hey, Ive got one of them too. I traded an old bicycle frame for it and it works great now. It didn't when I got it though. It's a sharp radio. Somebody had put a variable resistor inline with another resistor and it was acting up. I've recently started trying to teach myself how to fix radios and I took that piese out and soldered the resistor back together and it works great now.

[Night Crawler]

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