A Quick Test for Vibrator Transformers

Awesome additional note:
 You can also use this method to check out the transformers, and the condition of home stereos with open primaries.
 Simply back feed the transformer's 6.3 (or 12V)  pilot light winding. 
I saved hundreds of hours doing this where I used to contract at.

We were subject to many power outages in that rural area, and after power outage$$$, I could count on lots of repair jobs. Many of the stereos had taken from 220-1.2KV into the primaries.

 Further note: The power transformers primaries did a great job of protecting the $1.00 fuses too!

Awesome Frank. Too bad one can't do that with most of the newer car radios around these days though.

I  developed a "Quick & Dirty" test for vibrator transformers.

 Having received 20+ car radios to repair in one lot, I saw that many of them had water damage, rust, etc.

Not wanting to waste time on possibly damaging a good vibrator I did the following:

I would pull the vibrator, and open the primary feed wires of the transformer that the vibrator fed.
 Then I would use a high current 6.3 or 12.6 V  filament transformer to feed the vibrator transformer with. This, of course, depended on the voltage of the radio.
 
  I could easily monitor the current draw, voltage and operation of the radio from there. If the draw was acceptable for that specific radio, then it was likely worth repairing. 

 If the transformer was bad, I could look for a replacement or put the radio in the scrap pile, depending on what the customer wanted to spend.
I never ran them for more than 5 minutes that way, as you never knew what would fail.

Way back in the "Age of Stone Knives and Bear Skins" there were numerous articles on how to turn a car radio into a home set. Some just used the filament transformer feed trick while others had you build a power supply to feed the radio with.

This worked great, as most car radios were superior in sensitivity to home radios. (Think of the ignition noise, and vibration they were subjected to, as well as poor signal conditions).

The only thing that was a problem is some folks ran a long wire for an antenna into the radio. This could cause signal overload and distortion.  Yes, you can have too much signal too.
  I made a couple of these home sets, one tube and one solid state and used a car radio antenna on them with no problems. Don't forget to re-adjust the antenna trimmer!

 I even added on a shortwave car radio converter and could listen to the world in my AM only car radio. I only had to re-adjust the antenna trimmer. 
Since my second one was solid state, I just fed it with a 12VDC power supply. With a quick power disconnect, I could put it in my truck and go up on a mountaintop and really get some good DX reception too!