General Electric M113YRD
 

A few months ago I missed out on one of these, but last week another one appeared on eBay and I snatched it up!

It arrived yesterday and I'm happy to report it survived shipping and, since the seller had already powered it on, plugged it in to the PR57 and it powered up right away with no excessive current draw.

A few things I noticed right away is that while the picture is pretty stable, certain images make the picture warp both vertically and horizontally, often resulting in a horizontal crease (I've included pics of this phenomena).

Also the antenna is broken and it is missing its UHF knob/indicator. would anyone here happen to have a picture of what one looks like, or has one they'd be willing to part with? (antenna too)

The horizontal is just barely too short, but I have not replaced any of the caps yet, though I understand that aside from the electrolytics most are ceramic and should still be good.

The white tubular ceramic caps are not to be trusted.

I remember those sets very well. i "cut my teeth" in learning how to do TV repairs when i was growing up, on those cheaply made G.E's. i was also servicing them on a regular basis when i was working in TV shops, even well into the 80's

i believe that the model you have has a "split" chassis (two printed circuit boards that are mounted vertically).
these were notorious for bad / broken solder joints (especially under the tube sockets), drifted resistors, & those "ceramic" (paper in a ceramic tube) capacitors. the design was a poor because of heat build up which "cooked" a lot of the components on the circuit boards.
last, but not least, the compactron tube that does the sync separation & AGC functions are usually the first tube to go bad in the set

Check to see that the aquadag (conductive coating) on the CRT is securely grounded, and that there are no isolated 'islands' of the coating.

Opened it up and the aquadag coating was completely in tact. There appears to be only one white .1uf 1000v ceramic-paper cap on the 410v boost source. The single electrolytic can runs stone cold so I wont be in any rush to replace it for now, good thing too cause it looks like a real pain to get to. Robert1 you're certainly right about the heat this thing gives off. Those compactrons give off a TON of heat. They even got too hot to touch in the brief time it took to test them! I'm currently running it with a small desk fan pointed at the vents and things are staying pretty cool now. I haven't replaced anything yet, but I have noticed that there is a large disk cap on the cathode of the damper tube that's bubbled up a lot. Could this be the source of the picture warp I'm experiencing?

Also, (not that it's important for any practical reason anymore) the UHF tuner appears to be stuck a little off from channel 66. Turning the tuner stem (still missing the knob) has no effect and it doesn't stop in either direction. Is that by design or is there a mechanical failure?

Gotta say, I'm still pretty impressed with this set. I know everything inside is really flimsy, but GE's goal for this model was to make it as light and compact as possible, after all. And they certainly succeeded, considering it weighs a mere 12lbs - about as much as my modern tabletop flatscreen tv of around the same size.

now that I think about it, this thread would probably be more appropriate in the "Rectangular Screen Tube Televisions" section so if one of the administrators could move it there (if possible) I'd appreciate it.

Done.

thanks!

Give us a photo of the antenna as mounted inside the back - I've got a lot of rods, but will need to know how the ball is mounted - clamp, v-pinch, or riveted.

As to the UHF tuner, is it a clutch style or gearbox (whitish round assembly in line with the shaft at the front of the tuner)? A pix would also help. ES85 or EP85-something tuner - all the solid state GE UHF tuners are non-serviceable, but the mechanicals can be transplanted. I'll pull the Sams if I have it and see what the part number is for the UHF knob - I have a bunch of older GE Utica/Syracuse knobs - what plant is mentioned on the back, possibly molded in the neck bell on the back?

Any parts I have are yours for postage only - I have no use for most of them.

For the tearing try running a weak signal & see if it
gets better. If so look at AGC. If not horz AFC diode area.
The UHF is the drive mech. Its replaceable, IIRC just clips
in place. Very common fail.
Antenna probably is ball & rod clamped in a C shaped mount.
You could change the ball & rod or just the rod. Finding
the right size is the trick.
Keep in mind these sets were built to just run & sell cheap.
The parts count is very low & it dont take much to cause
trouble. Shows were the name " Good Enough" came from.

73 Zeno:smoke:
LFOD !

I've got the UHF knobs - both the outer and inner. If you'll post pictures of how the antenna mounts in the back, I can probably make the trifecta - all for postage only.

UHF knobs are ES43X490 (inner) and ES43X491 (outer)

Your UHF tuner has a limited slip clutch - the inner shaft/outer clear knob will spin continuously, but the outer (larger diameter area) shaft/channel indicator will stop at channels 14 and 83. I just verified this by placing the knobs I have on a similar tuner to see the effect.

The pix shows the two knobs on the tuner - and an antenna I suspect is close to what you need. It's actually for a same-period Sanyo tube set, but will work with slight differences. No modification should be necessary, but the new antenna doesn't have the shoulder on the rod like the old one, and sits flush with the top of the ball, rather than 3/4" proud of the ball. GE was the only manufacturer to use a combination shoulder-and-short rod arrangement, and JFD only manufactured them for GE, so Russell and others didn't offer an exact replacement. All my GE and JFD stuff is the longer rod, which won't fit/stow in a small set like yours.

Here are the pictures of the antenna as mounted inside the cabinet. It appears that there is some sort of sheath insulator it collapses into. I think there is a little grommet at the top that'll let me take it off and put it on another one.

Looking closer at the UHF tuner it appears something internal has indeed broken as the outer shaft also turns continuously.

Findm-Keepm PM me your info so I can send you postage fare, I'd really appreciate those parts.

I tried injecting a weaker signal and it didn't really help things. checked all the resistors around the Horiz AFC and they all appeared to be in spec. I've also included a pic of the disk cap that looks suspicious. I maybe should emphasize that this issue also affects vertical linearity too, yet all the resistors around the sync separator are in spec as well. speaking of the vertical, I failed to mention previously that the vertical hold pot stem has broken off. luckily its stuck in a position that locks on, but it appears that replacing it will mean i'll have to replace the vert. height and linearity controls too as all three are contained in a housing that clips in. I've toyed with the idea of maybe trying to glue something onto the nub and hope it stays, but I'm not sure what kind of adhesive to use (JB weld?), as well as what to glue to it.

Oh! almost forgot!

Does anyone here know if there's a [practical] way to re-chrome the plastic knobs?

As for your flat cap, there must be a way to lengthen the 2 metal tabs and so move it away from the vacuum tube. .. I have already done and I never had any worries with this piece (another model of tv). Because I see that this CAP is full of bubbles and this is not pleasant because, considering the heat released by the vacuum tube, even if you change it and you do not lengthen the 2 legs of the cap, Will always bubble and you will always have to change it .. I would lengthen the 2 legs and make sure that it is not near the vacuum tube.

PM me your address - I'll get the antenna and the knobs out to you ASAP. The ceramic cap looks ok - the caps are sprayed with a waxy substance to make them move through the automatic insertion equipment, and the wax can "boil off" if too close to a tube. RCA, in their field service seminars would recommend cleaning all ceramic discs in IFs, Sync and Oscillator circuits with naptha (lighter fluid) to remove the wax. If too much accumulated between the leads, it could affect the value of smaller value capacitors.

Also remember that an engineer specified that cap and it's temperature coefficient for that spot on the board. As to sync, have you replaced any AFC diodes? If not, we always replaced them as a preemptive measure. You can use any 1N914, 1N3064, 1N4148, or similar switching diode. Cheap, and good insurance against a call-back.

As to the vertical hold control, I have many Striptrols, and about 30-40 New-in-package ones for GE. I'll check the part number in my Sams and see if I have one - same story, yours for postage only. I've got two TV shops AND a distributor's GE inventory (all post '65 parts...), so I'm set for specific GE parts. I long ago got rid of the generic stuff - caps, CRTs, resistors, crystals, lamps, fuses and non-GE marked semiconductors...

the only diode (read: solid state diode) in this set is the video detector. There is a full-wave rectifier in the A-part of the 8B10 compactron that's labeled as the "Horiz AFC" and it tests pretty strong, and all of the components around it are in spec.

I'm also sending this shaft to replace the vertical hold shaft - the striptrol (Lin, Ht, Hold) comes apart with the bending of about 6 or 8 tabs, and the broken shaft can be replaced. Centralab, Stackpole and CTS all made them, and there are subtle differences, so the shaft has a 50/50 chance of fitting your striptrol.

Cheers,

You missed the B+ rectifier diode off the powerline and the UHF tuners also usually had a mixer diode. :D

...and you missed the zener......:D

It's been a while since I've updated this thread, thought I'd bring everyone up to speed on things. I changed the lone ceramic/paper-wax capacitor on the HV side. Still getting some horizontal warp on high contrast images (even with a weak signal) and have yet to find its cause. I have not performed an alignment yet, so far it yields visible lines up to 3.0MHz on a multiburst bar sweep pattern. Would an alignment produce a higher response?

Also I've noticed that the HV hum is EXTREMELY LOUD. Is this normal or is the flyback being over driven?

lastly, thank you very much, Findm-Keepm, for the parts! So far I've installed the antenna and the UHF knob, but yet to install the V-hold knob as the "striptrol" is an absolute pain to get into x.x