Collins 516F-2
Power Supply Rebuild
I’m rebuilding this Collins 516F-2 power supply. One of the chokes, L1 was bad, had indications the choke was overheated. The others 2 chokes were questionable so I’m replacing all 3 chokes.
I ordered and built the W0IY upgrade kit PC board.
I removed all of the capacitor clamps and mounted the hex stand offs to mount the upgrade kit PC board.
I removed the original cracked outer insulation power cord making room for the new power cord and strain relief. I had to clean up a mess around the power cord terminal strip and the original HV capacitor and ground terminal strip. The interconnecting cable’s ground was too short. Moving the terminal strip broke the ground so I made a longer ground to keep from breaking the ground connection.
I measure the DC resistance of the power transformer windings and made note of them on the 516F-2 schematic.
This power supply does not have a dual primary winding for 120VAC/240VAC power. The schematic found on the CCA website is for a different 516F-2 power supply that has dual primary windings.
Top view before rebuild. Note the dirt around the power transformer and chokes.
Original Below Chassis view
Top View After Removing chokes and clean up of dirty and grim around the power transformer and choke area.
Test mount of the upgrade PC board. Drilling out the capacitor clamp rivets was not easy.
Note I have not mounted the upgrade kit’s C1 replacement 0.05ufd 1KVDC Orange Drop capacitor. I decided not to use the 0.05ufd 1KVDC Orange Drop capacitor. I ordered a 0.05ufd 2KVDC film capacitor as a replacement in order to have a higher voltage safety margin than the upgrade kit’s 1KVDC Orange Drop capacitor had. Once the capacitors arrive I’ll mount one on the upgrade PC board.
More clean up of wiring, removal of the original cracked insulation power cord, and other components not used with the upgrade kit. Waiting for the arrival of the 3 chokes before any further work will be done. The replacement power cord and strain relief will be installed once I have the 3 new replacement chokes.
New replacement chokes, L1, L2, and L3 can be purchased from the following link:
https://ke9pq.com/search.php?search_query=collins+l1+choke§ion=product
