Well, after searching high and low, near and far, I gave up on finding replacement coil-springs for the RF-2200. I found some parts radios, but people think that just because it's an RF, they can get an arm and a leg for it. Granted, there are some out there that will pay $75 for a radio that's dead-in-the-water, but not me.
So, ingenuity was the call of the day. I had a friend give me an off brand radio that didn't work in hope I could get it going. Instead of attempting a repair, I decided it was best suited for a scavenger unit.
I removed the springs and did a MacGuyver on the Panasonic.
First off, the way the springs are mounted and connected on the RF-2200 are unlike anything I've come across. They coil from the front to the back like most, but instead of connecting to a plate that's mounted to the compartment, the near-end straightens-out and goes through the bottom of the compartment.
What I had to work with was an inverted spring attached to a backing plate with a rivet. While engineering the mounting of the new spring in my mind, I realized that the rivet was hollow enough in the center to get a small bolt through.
I drilled a 5/32 diameter hole dead-center where the old spring was and mounted the new spring and plate and tightened it with a nut.
For the connections I simply attached an eyelet connector on the end of some 16 gauge wire, cut it to fit and attached it to the screw. The other end was then soldered to the existing connector.
While not a work of art, the improvised battery compartment serves my needs well. There are probably a lot of purists out there just shaking their head, but the functionality of a radio is the most important point. After all, the battery compartment is out of sight, so it doesn't take away from the aesthetics of the rig. What I gained though was an already great radio made better by taking the electrical noise of AC out of the picture.
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