An eBay purchase has turned out to be an all-matching-dates Touch-Tone Princess, in good shape with hardwired handset cord, from 4/71. Line cord was new, but I don't mind that (and it's easily replaced with an original, if I decide to bother). The phone had three problems, two of which I have solved:
--it wouldn't break dial tone. That was a polarity problem; switching green and red on L1 and L2 solved that.
--it wouldn't light. The line cord had been replaced, so I wired in a transformer direct to the terminal block, and that's working now.
--it won't ring.
The ringer appears to be wired correctly, per the circuit diagram. I would like to keep the original one if possible, because everything else here is unmolested. Can anyone walk me through diagnosing this, and possibly repairing the ringer itself?
First off, you did well on figuring out the first two problems. The polarity thing happens a lot on hard-wired touch-tone sets. The line cord you couid even replace with a regular silver modular line cord with spades on one end. It would have four wires and that's enough to light the phone and provide dial tone.
The ringers on Princess phones aren't the greatest design, but they can usually be made to work. The gap between the clapper and the bell should be fairly close but not touching. The bell gong may be eccentric, with the hole off center, so you can rotate it to get the spacing right. You can manually activate the clapper with your finger to see if it reaches the bell gong and doesn't "sit" on the gong and muffle the sound. Sometimes the clapper is just stuck from years of inactivity, so a little movement could be all it needs. Look at the bell when the phone is trying to ring and see if you have any clapper movement at all. There's a "loud-soft" adjustment that should be set to "loud" when you're troubleshooting.
You mentioned you checked the wiring. I assume none of the bell wiring goes to ground, which would be the yellow wire of the mounting cord. At one time most phones used that method, but when things changed to modular, they changed to just the red and green wires of the line cord.
A picture of the bell and the wiring, with the touchpad moved out of the way, would help a lot, just in case there's something amiss. Good luck getting it going. The hard-wired models are scarcer than the modular ones, since so many went back for refurbishment and became modular.
Thanks. Photos here, of the network and the terminal block.
The line cord has two active conductors (green and red) plus yellow; the black has been snipped off.
I am running the bulb off a separate line leading directly from the light circuitry to the transformer.
And here's another photo showing the whole chassis, including the bell assembly.
Is the ringer connected as follows?
Black to L1
Red to K
There should also be 2 wires on A:
Slate (gray) wire from the line switch
Black wire from H
Ringer was connected thus. Black wire from H was floating free, and I hooked it to A.
Still doesn't ring.