i acquired a late 40's Olympic tv today. it was in pieces in a long retired tv repair mans garage along with a few other goodies i got. well anyways, i took it all home, cleaned connections and dug out my boxes of tubes. well, the chassis of the tv is out . probably stupid of me but i cleaned it all up and plugged it in. all the tubes came to life after i replaced 2. ok that looked good. well, i left it on for about 5 minutes. everything was glowing, even the filament on the back of the crt. no picture came up. now, i am a chicken with old tvs, ive had a few arc out and sit me on my @$$ before, but i love the round tube on this set, id like to get it working. is the picture tube bad or is it a cap issue?

No picture doesn't necessarily mean you have a bad picture tube. If you know someone with a CRT tester, have them come by and test it. Much more likely is that you need to recap the set. I wouldn't plug it in again without a variac that has a fuse. When you try out a set for the first time, connect it to the variac and bring the set up slowly while watching to make sure no bad things happen. If you just plug the set in, if the electrolytic capacitors are leaky or shorted, you'll possibly wipe out your power transformer and cause lots of other damage. At the very least you should replace the electrolytic cans before bringing it up again.

You need to replace all the paper caps in the power supply and horizonal oscillator first, then give it a try.

I have the same tv chassis , until you replace the capacitors it wont show any image.
mike

I had the same experience with my '59 Zenith portable. No picture until I replaced all the caps.

this thing is a mess. i need to find someone local to work on the tv, i wont do it. the radio will be a snap, only about 4 papers in there. no phono was in it, i have a telefunken changer i think ill put in. any idea how much someone would probably charge?

Well, getting someone to work on this beastie might be problematic. A lot of 'em won't wanna tackle it, likely the younger crowd will never have seen anything like it.You MAY have to fork over a couple hundred bucks to coax someone into tackling it...

If you want to make that TV play reliably, that means replacing all of the electrolytic and paper capacitors. That is probably a few dozen caps. Not knowing who lives in your area, it's impossible to know how much they would charge. Presumably they would charge you the cost of the new parts -- say, something under $50 -- plus their labor charge for the hours spent replacing caps.

Once the old caps have been replaced, it's possible the TV might just work. Or, you might have to fix some other problem, such as a burned-out flyback transformer, which was the reason the owners retired it in the first place. Or, you might have to fix a couple of other problems. It's like finding a 60-year old car in a barn. Looks cute, but what needs fixing? Does it have worn-out rings, a chewed-up transmission, a busted axle? Impossible to guess by staring at the outside.

Until you recap it, you can't usually play it long enough to uncover other problems. So a repair guy needs to spend a minimum number of hours just getting it to that state. Once it is sort-of working, then you can use conventional diagnostic methods to locate other problems and estimate how much they'll cost to fix.

In 1952, someone might have been able to fix this TV by just popping in a new tube or whatever. Today is decades later. What the TV needs now is restoration -- that's far more work than a quick easy fix.

Phil Nelson

itd be worth it for a couple hundred bucks. and @ sandy g i am the younger crowd! but thats why i collect these things. i have close to 40 radios a couple tvs and a few phono's. a lot of my friends my age (23) never have seen anything like it. ill have to search around for a repair man. i have a feeling theres other things wrong with it though. the wire that goes into the crt on the side has a nice big wad of old electrical tape around it, so who knows. but for now, at least i can enjoy the radio and phono :)

If you contact an area radio/TV collector club, perhaps someone there can recommend a repair guy. Here's a list of clubs:

http://antiqueradio.com/clublist.html

Phil Nelson

You could just dump that electrical crap and make a nice fish tank out of the cabinet...

If you find a vintage-TV guy willing to look at the set, it'd be a good idea to ask if he has a CRT tester and an instrument called a "ringer" for testing the flyback and yoke.
It'd be a shame to do a full recap only to find one of those vital organs is bad.

Not to be flip, but I hope that most any "vintage TV guy" has a tube tester on hand. Now the yoke/flyback ring tester he may be able to skate on. Really, it's surpising at the work that can be accomplished without even the most rudimentary equipment such as an oscilloscope.

I know a guy who makes a good part of his living fixing TVs and he never uses a scope. It wouldn't surprise me if he didn't know how to interpret a waveform. Still, a tube tester is essential I say.

hey, i bought my first tv for 80 bucks with the intention on making it an aquarium. but then when i got home i plugged it in and it worked! its a hell of a set to watch the munsters or gilligans island on. i checked out that website, and i have no idea how to use it. but ill have to check the phone book. i live on the line of mass and ct so im sure someone is around in either direction. i did put the whole set back together, restored what i could and called it quits for now. i had to cut out about 4 inches off the entire bottom. it was all rotted out from sitting in a garage for 30 years. ill rebuild the base, when i get around to it :smoke:

Too bad your not near Omaha NE. I would love to get that set going for you just for the heck of it. Yes, first thing check the CRT, if good then I recap the set, bring it up slowly on a variac, and check the B+, and check for high voltage. Also I'm sure that CRT uses an ion trap magnet on the neck of the CRT, and if it's not adjusted into the right place you won't get anything on the screen. If the CRT is a 10BP4, I have a good one that I would sell you if you need it. You can get most all of the caps and tubes on e-bay, or check out Surplus Sales of Nebraska. http://www.surplussales.com/

walterbeers id like to inquire on the picture tube, even if i dont need it. i have a bunch of other spare parts from an identical set. i know next to nothing on how to fix these things. ill check around tomorrow when i have some time for a tv repair man. i found one out in hartford a few months back but he wanted 150 for a bench fee, and if he couldnt fix it he wanted an extra 50 plus the 150. mind you the set worked fine i just wanted it tuned up. talk about robbery! but, i will check again and tell how i make out.

if you were closer to me i'd help but i'm in NJ , my Olympic is also from CT where I lived years ago but got it when I was in NJ, that is a 16" picture tube , probably like mine a 16DP4 , I have a spare 16DP4 that's not the greatest but functional , I know if you put a brightener on it it looks really good but will work without one and give a good picture with a few minutes of warm up incase you need one, curious what spare parts do you have?

mike

i have all the tubes from the other sets tv and radio, the glass and the rounded metal that goes over the crt, knobs and the antennas. i would of taken the other crt but it was long gone. todays mission is trying to find a repair man willing to work on it

activate your transporter or teleporter and send it over :)

mike

i wonder how much itd cost to ship it.... :scratch2:

First of all make sure that it is a 10BP4 that you would need. I have pictures of it on my public profile, and I will try to upload them with this reply. I had a guy that was going to give me $100 for it plus shipping, however he found one that was closer to him. The tube is good, very good emission, and is a GE dated 08 of 1958. I had it in a set (a stromberg carlson) but never could get it working, as the set was just too far gone. However I did get a bright raster on it when it was in the set and when was working on it. I don't know about shipping. I don't have any CRT boxes around and all I could do is have UPS pack it for me the best they could. If interested send me a private message on this site and we will work out shipping and payment. I guess shipping would be in the range of (maybe) $30. Would also have to see about shipping insurance if I send it.

ill have to check and make sure its the right crt, and i want to get someone who knows what their doing to look at it first. i was thinking of having the radio overhauled too. when its all fixed its going to be a gift, but not after i get some enjoyment out of it first :music:

If you have experience with restoring the electronics of tube radios you can fix a tube TV. I stopped getting much enjoyment fixing tube radios long ago...They just are not enough of a challenge to me anymore.

If you are gun shy from getting zapped by HV then to be blunt SUCK IT UP. I've gotten meaner shocks from tube radios and meaner still from Xmas lights than from touching the 25KV HV lead of an 80's color set that had just been turned off. If you work on any device that plugs into the wall long enough you WILL get a zap eventually and no device is more dangerous in that regard than an other...Only through good work procedure can shocks be minimized.

im not afraid of getting shock, im afraid of being my typical clumsy self and having that nice round picture tube implode or frying it out beyond repair. im amateur when it comes to repairing, and its a beautiful set. i dont want to risk messing it up (even more than it is currently) i dont mind having to pay someone to fix it. i just dont wanna be robbed! lol!

it would cost more and be more dangerous then driving it to someone.
don't worry about the picture tube imploding it wont happen from just siting .

is there a model number on the chassis or cabinet or tube chart ?

mike

Safest thing for the CRT is to remove it and get a 5AXP4 or 8AXP4 test CRT those make the chassis easier to handle during restoration.

its an olympic dx-621