[morzh]

Soldered the volume squelch wire to the ato tuning dial's contact.
The volume intermittently started disappearing when rotating the lever without being pressed.
After two hours or so of trying to align the contact, trying the gaskets etc from the donor chassis, I realized that the insulation film, around which the moving contact rotates, is missing.
I took the vernier crom the donor chassis, now it is working.

I thought of trying a layer of Kapton film but not sure how durable it would be.

Meantime, i have become an expert in the auto dial assembly and now can take it apart with my eyes closed and without any notes. Having said that, I wasn't able to extract the retaining pin from the new vernier. But then itmoves just fine.