Need help identifying strange apparatus from old car radio

Hey,
title says it all, i found this strange looking device from old car radio, seems to be some sort of adjustable....thing. But surely someone of you knows better, what is it, what it does/how it does etc....ANY help would be appreciated, i'm confused :S.

It's the tuner. it uses adjustable ferrite cores inside inductors. Usually moved into the correct place using a pre-set button on the front panel.

As rmn_tech says it is the tuner.

There are two ways to vary the frquency of a tuned circuit, change the capacitance, or change the inductance.
For many years designers of car radios chose to vary the inductance rather than the capacitance.
Designers of domestic radios usually chose to use a variable capacitor.

A circuit which was adjusted by varying the inductance was often referred to as "Permeabilty Tuned".

In more modern designs, the local oscillator is generated by some kind of synthesiser and the signal frequency circuits are tuned by varicap diodes.

JimB

It looks like the entire radio section

As already mentioned, it's permeability tuned, as pretty well all car radios were - I presume it's a far hardier method than using a variable capacitor?, which are quite fragile devices.

thanks for replies, this might be stupid question, but is it still usable, or should it just be kept as decoration?

fezder said:

thanks for replies, this might be stupid question, but is it still usable, or should it just be kept as decoration?

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It's perfectly usable back inside the car radio, not much use for anything else.

Nigel Goodwin said:

... I presume it's a far hardier method than using a variable capacitor?, which are quite fragile devices.

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Majorly (but not utterly) more immune to value change(s) due to vibration.

cowboybob said:

Majorly (but not utterly) more immune to value change(s) due to vibration.

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Like I said, hardier

Just responding to the "?" mark .