Subject: ZENITH safety caps; the signle-section 22-5001 that was used in the 25CC50 through 25EC58 Chromacolor before the upright chassis with the 4-lead cap...

I never thought I'd have an issue getting these, but evidently they're hard to come by. Laughter broke out across the phone order room yesterday when I tried to get some from Andrews. Strangely, I've never bothered to look into what the value is on these, and if there's anything "special" about them. They just have the part number and "special cap" on them. As any of us who worked on Zeniths years ago know, you're on borrowed time before the high voltage goes zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZT!!! and the neck falls off the CRT, when you still have the white ceramic ones installed.

Does anyone have any experience on what if anything can be used in place of the originals?

Thanks, Charles

The modern equivalent to these caps (which are still used in TVs) are just ordinary looking high voltage film caps. Zenith used orange drops for years in this application. They're typically rated for around 1600v DC. I think the value is noted on the schematic, but you should be able to measure it if it's still good.

Charles I have used high voltage orange drops to replace them. If you can't locate the value I'm sure I find one of the replacment caps and put my LC meter on it. Most of the time they would not go bad all at once so you would get some warning with higher then normal high voltage. I would pull the high voltage lead from the CRT before power up and see where its at. I've only ever seen one E model that lost its crt this way. Lot of "F"'s with the 4 lead white cap blew their tubes.

Zenith listed them as .0018uf at 1600v in CM-122. If you need me to LC meter some let me know. I'd try the above value check the HV with the HV lead removed from the CRT add or remove one or two untill you get the right voltage.
Good luck.. Thats one of the best NTSC televisions ever made. Great CRT maby the reds are a bit orange. They would run and run.

Thanks for the tips! I do have at least a couple of the orange drop 22-5001s in packages, so I'll use my Sencore LC101 and see what value. I was just concerned that they might have some sort of weird temp coefficient or something special since they say "SPECIAL" on them. I never had reason to question it before, since I'd just order a bag of them when I got low.

And 3Guncolor, you're right about the flat chassis not busting CRT necks as much as the uprights. I think I may have seen 2, but I saw at least a few dozen upright chasses do that. In fact Zenith gave us free CRTs whenever we got a call for that. I wonder if they'd still do that??? (NOT!)

Charles

Charles post the value you find with your LC meter I'm also out of the orange replacment and it will save me the trouble of pulling one from a chassis to confirm the value. I do also remember Zenith giving us free CRT's and modules to fix the sets that "blew up". They must have lost a bundle on that four lead cap. I liked it when a set came in and we took the back off and one of the caps end was blown off we'd know we where in for trouble...

Thanks,
Steve

Charles post the value you find with your LC meter I'm also out of the orange replacment and it will save me the trouble of pulling one from a chassis to confirm the value.Thanks,
Steve

Will do... It may be a week or so because I think those new caps are still up at my ex-girlfriend's place in Santa Clarita. I'll get them next time I go up there.

Charles