Ampico-kid
10-07-2008, 04:35 PM
It's been a long hard battle, but I think I've finally got my Zenith Porthole ready for it's official unveiling. It looks pretty good and works great on all functions.
The TV section, which I'd imagined was going to be the most difficult part of the job, turned out to be the least troublesome of the lot.
I figured I'd start with something easy like the turntable. It needed to have both rubber idler wheels rebuilt, complete disassembly, clean and relube, the platter needed to be reflocked, and the cartridge/needle had to be replaced. Nothing earth shattering, but it did take a lot of time, energy and money to complete. It works quite well, although it's a rather odd functioning system since there's no auto shutoff after the last record has been played.
Next came the AM/FM radio chassis. This turned out to be the most troublesome of the entire job. Aside from the obvious recapping job and a general cleaning and relubrication of all of the mechanical moving parts, I came face to face with the dreaded Zenith Mica caps in the IF can Syndrome. What a project that was!!!! Just about every IF can (both AM and FM) had to be removed from the chassis and disassembled. On some of them I was able to clean the carbon track off of the mica, and some of them I had to replace the internal mica cap with new silver mica caps. For anyone who has never had one of these things apart....I can only say avoid them when possible. It was a nightmare. But, persistance and patience does pay off sometimes and in this case after quite a lengthy battle I was victorious. The FM radio sounds absolutely fantastic and the AM sounds like AM.
The TV chassis restoration was pretty uneventful with the usual replacement of all paper and electrolytic caps, and out of tolerance resistors. Also a few weak tubes were replaced and a general clean up was in order. The crt had a booster and tested totally dead on my crt tester. I decided to give it a shot with my REM crt rejuvinator and the tube came back like gang busters. It now looks great.
I was lucky that the cabinet was in pretty good shape when I picked up the unit a few years ago. The only thing I did was to go over it with some wax to clean it and bring up the luster a little bit.
I've attached some pictures of the various parts of this combo unit.
It's quite a large and HEAVY unit, but seeing and hearing the end result, it's surely worth all the time and effort.
Bob.
The TV section, which I'd imagined was going to be the most difficult part of the job, turned out to be the least troublesome of the lot.
I figured I'd start with something easy like the turntable. It needed to have both rubber idler wheels rebuilt, complete disassembly, clean and relube, the platter needed to be reflocked, and the cartridge/needle had to be replaced. Nothing earth shattering, but it did take a lot of time, energy and money to complete. It works quite well, although it's a rather odd functioning system since there's no auto shutoff after the last record has been played.
Next came the AM/FM radio chassis. This turned out to be the most troublesome of the entire job. Aside from the obvious recapping job and a general cleaning and relubrication of all of the mechanical moving parts, I came face to face with the dreaded Zenith Mica caps in the IF can Syndrome. What a project that was!!!! Just about every IF can (both AM and FM) had to be removed from the chassis and disassembled. On some of them I was able to clean the carbon track off of the mica, and some of them I had to replace the internal mica cap with new silver mica caps. For anyone who has never had one of these things apart....I can only say avoid them when possible. It was a nightmare. But, persistance and patience does pay off sometimes and in this case after quite a lengthy battle I was victorious. The FM radio sounds absolutely fantastic and the AM sounds like AM.
The TV chassis restoration was pretty uneventful with the usual replacement of all paper and electrolytic caps, and out of tolerance resistors. Also a few weak tubes were replaced and a general clean up was in order. The crt had a booster and tested totally dead on my crt tester. I decided to give it a shot with my REM crt rejuvinator and the tube came back like gang busters. It now looks great.
I was lucky that the cabinet was in pretty good shape when I picked up the unit a few years ago. The only thing I did was to go over it with some wax to clean it and bring up the luster a little bit.
I've attached some pictures of the various parts of this combo unit.
It's quite a large and HEAVY unit, but seeing and hearing the end result, it's surely worth all the time and effort.
Bob.