Tell me if I'm wasting my time.
Found a rather sad looking sansui model 500 tube receiver up in a dump, and it looks like is has been outside for years. The chassis was well rusted, dialface busted, etc. The transformers, however, didn't look too bad, considering they all had their black paint still intact on their bells and the rubber on the wires was still flexible and decent. So I snipped them out and took them home.
I carefully took the bells off each.
The main tranny had some ants living in it, but I took care of them. All the wiring seems to be intact on all transformers.
Now here is the thing...
They are very damp on the inside, but not rotted away. The paper is soaked but everything still seems intact with the exception of parts of the very outer layer of fiber that flaked off when I removed the bells.
At this moment I have them in the oven, at about 150ยบ, slowly cooking them dry. The thing that worries me, is that the water had oxidised some of the transformer core and thus created a nice orange liquid rust that may have impregnated into the fiber between the windings.
After I feel that I have dried these completely, I'm gonna carefully take some measurements and see if they are at all salvageable. I tell ya, my hopes aren't too high, though. The main power transformer looks the most promising of the three.
Still, never hurts to try.
