Well been a while, but now getting back onto this epic project.

I did find the neutralizing cap (C2) was dirty with a film of oil burner soot inside, and there were lots of ding marks in there from zorchings:


c2.jpg

So I cleaned all that up , and shined the aluminum with scotch brite and sanded down the burrs from the zorching. Also noticed the center movable electrode that moves in to that cup,
was a little crooked. Turns out if you replace the doorknob caps, you stand a risk of mis-aligning that part of the cap, and looks like thats what happened also - as I had to replace those.

I also made up a cheaper L8 with (5) 560uH axial half watt inductors, totaling a bit over 2.5mH but I am hoping 2.8mH is not much a problem from 2.5mH.
Decided to put the plate on-off switch back in on the front panel so that in case of problems, its easier to throw it off, and kill the plate supply if the tubes somehow loose bias again.
Had to route 115v back thru one unused pin of the input power jack, back into the Heathkit supply to the plate relay for that, but seems to be working as intended.

I also have the spare set of 4-400A tubes in there now, as the last choke failure had one of the tubes sparking I think in the grid area. I put filament on and have all VR150 type tubes in the
screen supply, with a VR105 acting as the operating bias tube, and when I apply plate, things appear to be ok / normal for idle once again.