Got in a customers recent ebay purchased GE Superbase 3-5875A. He purchased it knowing it had no rec or xmt. I was hoping the varactor diode in the epoxy sealed vfo box was bad. I have chipped the epoxy out of more of these than I can shake a stick at and have just gotten to the point that I replace that diode whether it works or not when I restore these radios. Well, I wasn't that lucky. Did a quick check for 10.240 on the PLL and it was missing. Checked the 10.240 oscillator transistor and no voltage. Checked and had main supply voltage to pin 12 of connector N2 and voltage out of the regulator transistor, hmmmm. Time to pull the board and sure enough someone had been in it before. They "tried" to undo a channel mod and didn't get a jumper wire connected and there are also some broken circuit traces that will need repaired. All that no biggie and easy to fix. The big problem is the last picture. A cracked transformer core with a piece of the alignment tool broken off in it, grrrrrrrr. To make matters worse it is not a standard core. Its the one for the VFO that has a square hole and is almost impossible to find. My stockpile of them is getting smaller and smaller. Keeping my fingers crossed i can get the mangled core out. The lesson here is if you don't know what your doing and don't have the correct tools don't touch it. You could turn your what would have been a easily repaired radio into a nice looking brick.
Mike