I finished up repairs to last weekends estate sale find. This is one of my "holy grail" finds as far as color Tv goes. Its a '69 model Z4507W with the 16Z8C50 chassis. Spent a good part of last night cleaning it up, and today I had to repair the tuner mechanics. The UHF was rather stiff to turn as these normally are. You have to take everything apart and degrease the gears to free everything up, then relube with luberex. I replaced the bad 10uF@475v lytic in the grid circuit of the vertical output, as the vertical was way to short. You may have seen my youtube video for this TV where I point that out. A quick touch-up of the burst amp plate coil brought the hue into balance, picture was a little too green at mid point of the control. Cathode current is nice and low now after efficiancy coil adjustment, about 185 mA, the fly runs nice and cool now. Had to put in a new focus rectifier too. It was a little leaky, picture was only sharp all the way at the end of the control. The new focus rectifier makes the focus crisp and clean at mid point of control. Checked the ESR on the rest of the caps, and this TV is in good shape. Its a nice low hour set, so the original CRT is bright like new. Amazing how good the picture is on these Zeniths. I did notice a little discrepancy though with the date coding on this set. I want to start a different thread on that as its something I've never seen before.
Here are the "after" pics, all fixed up.

WOW! That set has an amazing picture!! Typical Zenith! Great job Doug!

Wow! I love those all metal Zeniths both the color and black and white ones. That is definitely on of my holy grail sets also. I don't yet have one but I found a Zenith roundie so maybe I'll find one of those someday too.

Great picture! If it was 1969, I'd probably be watching a POS Sampo or something. These were pricey sets, from what I've read. You can certainly tell; look at the picture all these years later.

That's one heck of a TV! If that picture looks that good on here; then, I know I'd be blown away if I could see it in person. Very good job!

From my experience, steel cabinet Zenith TV's in any form are very hard to find these days. I've had a few pass through here back in the '90's; but, the next one I find won't be passing through. It will stop here.

excellent TV equipment and excellent work of resorting.
Congratulations!

I forgot to mention that it's clean as a frickin whistle too! You always do A+ work! I was jealous the minute you showed me where you cleaned the back in that little spot to see how good it will look!:D Lucky dog!:thmbsp:

my brother in laws parents had that set in their bedroom.they were italians and always bought quality.he got it after they passed on and what a set it is.still playing like new.never had a repair and this set has seen more than a few hours on it.this is one of the holy grails of our hobby and i have tried to buy it for years now.the picture is sooooo crisp and clear.never saw a zenith before 1979 that had a bad crt.great set!

Seeing that set made my day. I can still remember goiing downtown with my Dad the day after our first color set ( a zenith roundie) blew up. We puchased that Zenith and cart it had a great picture, and a personality to go with it. I remember the sounds it made while warming up, and of course the wonderful aroma of warm tubes. The set was incredibly reliable with the exception of the channel light and a color tube burning out once in a while. I had the opportunity to get the set back from my uncle who had just passed, but one of my cousins decided it was junk and set it out to the garbage, before I got to his house!
I have not seen one around here for a long time, did not know they are so rare.
But on the bright side I recently aquired a Zenith Roundie, not sure if it was the exact model we had (before the melt down), but close enough.

Zenith was really at the top of their game, weren't they? I remember only one of these in "all metal" and, like others, didn't realize at the time that it was worth grabbing. I found it sitting inside a car at the junkyard! Someone had thrown every bit of scrap metal they could find in that junker. I'm sure I could have had it for nothing. Too many years ago.

Excellent video of your repair Doug!! Very in depth detail as well!

Seems I learn more and more from watching those videos.