If you can solder well and know how to disassemble electronic equipment,
the encoder replacement is quite easy. It starts with removing all the
knobs, top/bottom covers, and the front (black) panel. Then you remove
the nut that holds the encoder shaft in the hole of the chassis. Unplug
the encoder wiring harness from the PC board and remove the encoder
assembly through the bottom of the chassis.

I suggest you order just the encoder without the PC board. It's about
half the price of the original assembly. As I said, the PC board is no
longer necessary. The new part # is 3260012. The price was $11.51 about
three years ago. You will have to remove the wiring harness from the old
encoder PC board and solder the three wires to the matching terminals on
the new encoder. Follow the circuit traces on the old encoder PC board
to determine where each wire goes on the new encoder terminals.

There was a thread on this group more than a year ago where we discussed
why this encoder fails. Myself and another contributor came to the
conclusion that the factory lubricant (grease) causes the encoder
contacts to become less conductive, possibly oxidized. I disassembled an
R8B encoder which was acting like yours, cleaned/degreased it and
relubed it with a synthetic grease. It's been working fine for several
years now. How old is your R8B?

mike0219116 wrote:

Yes, the frequency is changing in strange increments when I turn the knob.
I'm trying to decide if I want to send my R8B back to Drake of if I should
fix it myself. It doesn't seem to be a tough repair.

"starman" wrote in message
...
mike0219116 wrote:

Does the encoder part for the Drake R8B include the shaft that the
tuning
knob sits on, or is the encoder simply a component in the radio separate
from the shaft?

The encoder wheel is located in a housing on the opposite end of the
shaft but it's all one (plastic) part. There are two ways to replace it.
You can buy it with/without the PC board that it's mounted on. The board
is actually a carry over from the original R8 which had an optical
encoder, so it's not really necessary for the A/B models. The encoder
without the PC board costs about $15. You can solder the three wires
coming from the encoder plug, to the pins on the encoder housing,
eliminating the PC board. Are you having a problem with your encoder?


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