I spent some time cleaning the accumulated dirt and rust from the chassis. I cleaned all the valve sockets using Servisol 10, and the pins of the valves with a glass fibre pen.

Referring to Philco Service Bulletin No.72 for the C-537 model, I replaced a dozen or so of the tubular capacitors and the electrolytics in the power supply section.

After 70 or so years I reasoned the electrolytics in the power supply were not to be trusted anyway so simply bypassed them with modern components - I didn't bother testing or trying to reform them, as at this point I was just trying to get the chassis working quickly.

After further continuity and resistance checks and a new length of mains cable fitted, I was ready to apply power for the first time via a lamp limiter.

I switched on for a minute or so, no indication of a problem from the lamp, so applied power directly. A short while later and I had the local medium wave station coming in loud and clear, despite no external aerial connected - BBC Radio 4 on long wave was a little quiet but soon came in loud and clear too with a few metres of aerial wire hooked up.

As this chassis was one of the 'deluxe' models it also offered a short wave range from 5.7 to 18 MHz which also performed quite well.

Spurred on by this initial success, I proceeded to restore the chassis more thoroughly - I replaced two further electrolytics and all of the tubular wax capacitors that were remaining with modern polypropylene types.

I also replaced the rubber mountings at the front of the tuning capacitor, the old ones were no longer flexible but just hard and brittle. The original large can-type electrolytics were carefully polished with Brasso, and retained for appearances sake whilst having been electrically disconnected below the chassis. I had intended to "re-stuff" these components, but decided it was not really necessary and far easier to add the new electrolytics out of sight underneath instead.

The top and sides of the chassis were painted in grey 'Smoothrite' paint, whilst the frame of the tuning capacitor and the mains transformer have been given a coat of the same product in silver. It was quite time consuming, and a steady hand needed, to paint the chassis without stripping it down completely first. But I'm more than happy with how its turned out, a definite improvement I think to the overall appearance.