Last summer I got an old antenna rotator from a friend. It’s controller is missing, but at least it still works and it’s only rusty, and needs a little renewing, and of course a new controller.

It has a little 12V motor and a 1K pot inside (as the antenna turns, the pot’s resistance changes and it can be used in a voltage divider circuit to detect the current angle of the antenna).

Today the weather was very nice and I had some time to work on this project, so I disassembled the whole thing.

The pot is in a very bad shape, WD40 spray didn’t helped it, so I’ll have to replace it with a good quality 10K one. To replace the pot, I had to dismount the gears.

At this point I realized that I only have normal quality pots at home, so I’ll have to buy a very good one tomorrow.

After this I went down to my workshop, and I continued the disassembly. There were some very rusty screws that didn’t want to come out easily and I spent most of the time tinkering away at them.
Finally I cleaned the case with methylated spirit and a wire-brush:

To be continued!