It's been a while since I've updated this thread. The Transars have been inop for more than a year. I heard a pop one day and then one LF-AMT stopped working. Of course, it's the one that I broke and fixed and now need to fix again. In the meantime, I'm listening to a pair of Altec Lansing 846U Valencia's that I picked up locally.
With the pandemic allowing me to work from home full time, which means no more coaching baseball and no more lost time to the commute, and with the weather somewhat cooperating, I decided it was time to finally fully refurbish the Transars.
At the moment, I pulled out the first Transar that I could get to. It was locked away in storage. This is the unit that works, though I've pulled the AMT and put it in a box.
The first step was to tap out the base/stand/footer. I love the look of these, but they're not very sturdy. You can see the rod that secure the baffle to the base. If you look close, you can see that each of the four corners is either broken or cracked.
Here's the baffle without the base. I put the rods in just to show where they go--it has only two, not four, and they are the same rods from the previous picture above.
In my shed, I laid the baffle down so that I could remove the bottom strip. This is the backside of the speaker. The front side is missing this little strip at the bottom, so I removed this one to copy it.
Same as above, with the strip removed.
With the stay-home order affecting local business, I didn't chance going out for wood, so I found whatever I had laying around. I found a piece of moulding that was long enough and only slightly thicker than what I needed. I'm not very skilled craftsman--I broke my thumb last November when my Chop Saw snagged something and now can't bend it fully. And that's a pretty tame and safe machine. I'm terrified of my portable table saw that my FIL uses when he's here, so I resorted to orbital sanding away material to my desired width. Lame, I know, but so what. The line here shows how much I needed to take off, and I used 60 grit. The type of wood and its exactness didn't much matter since I would be veneering it.
Here's a test fit of the new trim piece in the front baffle.
Another angle on the test fit. You can see it's not precise, but I did shave some more and got it better fitting.
Then I glued and clamped the original piece back. I specifically did this upside down (the black painted part should be facing up and the non-painted side should be down) because I liked the grain pattern match better.
Same as above. End of Day one.