NE500: Bells ring when dialling a phone number

[poplar1]

I don't see how cleaning the components has anything to do with a shorted capacitor

[TelePlay]

I don't see how cleaning the components has anything to do with a shorted capacitor

I don't either except it was never determined that the capacitor is bad. With a DVM that measures capacitance, the slate and red/slate wires could be taken off of A and K and two clip wires used to connect slate and red/slate to a 0.47 uF capacitor thereby temporarily replacing the network capacitor with a working external capacitor.

I opened up a similar WE 500 and placed a clip wire on A and K, thereby bypassing the network capacitor. Tried dialing with the bias spring on high and low, and in both positions, the ringer bell did not tinkle when dialing out.

I have no idea of why the phone works now, after cleaning. The only ringers that ever tinkled were the very old ringers in early subsets that did not have a bias spring at all. As such the clapper was free to move in either direction with only a little bit of energy going into those coils. The long bias spring was added by the manufacturers after the tinkling when dialing issue surfaced.

[RDPipes]

The way I see it is if corrosion, debris, soil, etc. was in excess on any wiring connection it could bridge (short out) or interfere with a good connection and can lead to who knows what not working, not working properly or a sporadic number of problems. It may not even be from the cleaning, maybe two or more wires were grounding out with each other. I don't think anyone will really ever know why but, something was fixed in the process of moving wires and cleaning connections. I think all that really matters is that it works now because you could spend a good part of your time trying to figure out exactly what happened and never find out, that and I see it as a big waste of time, LOL! 

[Contempra]

I don't either except it was never determined that the capacitor is bad. With a DVM that measures capacitance, the slate and red/slate wires could be taken off of A and K and two clip wires used to connect slate and red/slate to a 0.47 uF capacitor thereby temporarily replacing the network capacitor with a working external capacitor.

I opened up a similar WE 500 and placed a clip wire on A and K, thereby bypassing the network capacitor. Tried dialing with the bias spring on high and low, and in both positions, the ringer bell did not tinkle when dialing out.

I have no idea of why the phone works now, after cleaning. The only ringers that ever tinkled were the very old ringers in early subsets that did not have a bias spring at all. As such the clapper was free to move in either direction with only a little bit of energy going into those coils. The long bias spring was added by the manufacturers after the tinkling when dialing issue surfaced.

Basically, TelePlay, what you need to know, one of the two pieces of plastic "pile up" was misplaced, so I replaced it correctly, more there was a micro crack on one of the welds of the coil, and while I was at it, I redid the 4 welds of the coil, then I took my magnifying glass, I checked the network and a wire hid a spot of rust between two screws not far from the screws for the location of the wires of the ring. I scraped the rust spot, cleaned it with an alcohol cloth and reconnected the whole thing and it started to work properly again.

[TelePlay]

Well, it works so mission completed even if we don't know what was causing the problem or which part of your cleaning fixed it. Good job.