Yesterday, an older lady called to see if I wanted 4 TV's. She said two were consoles and two were portables. I went to her home in an older neighborhood and she took me to a basement room where the TV's were, which still had old red carpet from 40+ years ago. For some reason, old carpet is always a good indication that there's going to be at least one older TV in the house. Then, she showed me the TV's: a '97 BPC Quasar TV/VCR combo, two crappy '90's Zenith consoles, and a Zenith 19" Chromacolor II. I took the two portables and left the consoles. No need to bring home something that I will have to worry about dumping.

The Zenith is a 19" CCII from March, '79 and has a one knob varactor tuner and AM/FM radio. The TV is very clean to be an old motel set. When I fired it up, I was greeted with a washed out green picture with no chroma. I swapped the chroma modules for a known good one, touched up the greyscale, and it now has a decent picture. The picture tube is the inline type like what was used in the system 3's. I've seen a few Zenith motel sets that looked like this; but, they all used the system 3 chassis.

http://i538.photobucket.com/albums/ff341/radiotvnut/2009_1027tv0001.jpg

That is in really nice shape for a motel set. I have a '73 philco ford that made it through it's early days. That set looks like the consumer model with an added radio. I like it.

My brother once bought 3 pallets of similar one-knob, all-the-same-model System 3 sets at a Government Supply auction in 1992. He rebuilt a dozen or so of the 26 TVs and sold them to sailors living in the barracks for 25 bucks each. He more than quadrupled his investment, and when all was said and done, gave the parts and remnants to my TV-repairman Dad.

He got all three pallets for less than 90 dollars total. His secret? The auction was held in an unheated warehouse in February. They typically front-loaded the auction with the big $ lots, leaving the smaller dollar lots to be picked up quite cheaply. Freeze your A$$ off, and get the deal.

Cheers,

Back in early '97, I got a call from the head maintenance guy at the local Motel 6. He said they were in the process of getting new TV's and he had 20 19" GE's in various states of operation that I could have for $5 each. They were all early '80's knob tuned "PC" chassis GE sets. Most only needed caps and some needed their CRT's rejuvenated. I think I fixed 19 out of the 20 and sold them for $50-$75 each. The guy called again in a few months to let me know he had more; but, informed me that the motel was under new ownership and the new owners wouldn't let him sell the remaining TV's for $5/ each. I think they were thinking on the order of $50 each!

The only older Zenith motel set that I've seen was a standard 19" delta gun CCII. The only difference between that set and the consumer version was the motel version had it's UHF tuning knobs removed and a cover plate installed in their place. That set had the name of the motel engraved in large letters in the cabinet top. Something like "Buddy Bilbo's Motel". Likely some cheap flop house.

I was looking at my set and they must have used that chassis in a hospital version because the AC interlock receptical has three prongs. The actual power cord is a standard two wire type; but, the end that plugs into the set is designed to plug into the special 3 prong interlock plug.

I'm sure the actual hospital version of this set would be very hard to find today, as would be most hospital sets from the '70's and earlier.

Hi radiotvnut

I really like that set. And she has a great picture, too. Sweet!

I forgot to mention that this TV made me realize that I'm not as young as I once was. While I was loading this beast, I made a wrong move and now I'm paying for it in the form of a backache. When I was 17, I used to sling these sets around like they were nothing and it didn't phase me. For those that don't know, these Zenith chromacolor sets from the '70's are very heavy in comparison to a current 19" set.

My Zenith Sentry 2 19" table model TV isn't exactly light, either; nor is my RCA CTC185 XL100. I'm convinced that with the CRT sets, the larger the tube, the heavier the TV will be, although in the case of older sets, the power transformer and other chassis components will add to the weight of the set as well. Even the so-called "portables" of the '50s through the seventies weren't that easy to carry. I once saw a picture, in an old DIY TV repair book, of a Philco all-channel color set from the '60s, advertised as a portable, that was so heavy it actually required two men to move it if it was not on a stand. RCA had a "portable" black-and-white set in the '50s with a power transformer that was anything but. That is, the set could be moved from one room to another (it had a handle on top of the cabinet), but I don't think these sets were moved very often, because the transformer (and a metal chassis and cabinet) made them so heavy. I had a Philco "Briefcase 19" nineteen-inch portable from 1961 that didn't have a transformer, but it was in a metal cabinet and was plenty heavy in its own right. The lightest truly portable TV I ever had was a 12" tube-type portable from 1975, although my next small portable, a solid-state Zenith 12" set, was a bit heavier, but manageable. In between those sets was a Zenith SC300 19" B&W portable from the late '60s. It didn't have a transformer; however, it weighed...well, not the proverbial "ton" but it wasn't lightweight either. I am all but convinced that these older so-called "portables" were actually meant to be put in one place and left there, not unlike consoles, unless the portable set was on a stand.

Yep, my "new" Zenith uses a power transformer (a good sized one) and the chassis is all metal, except for the plug in PC board modules. There's also a metal shield around the CRT.

That particular model has the very flat tube; 110-degree, I think. It's HEAVY!!!! And comined with the Chromacolor II chassis, it's a heavy TV overall. The only one heavier was the same set with Space Command 1000.

Charles

This TV has served me well since I got it; but, it's now exhibiting intermittent vertical deflection issues. For the past several days, the picture has been jumpy. Tonight, it lost vertical deflection completely. Vertical sweep returned when I pressed on the vertical hold knob on the back of the set. So, tomorrow, I suppose I'll move the heavy thing off the cart so that I can resolder the connections on the vertical module, clean the controls, and clean and retension the module contacts. This set uses a different vertical module than what is used in the delta gun sets. This TV has the vertical output transistors on the chassis, while the delta gun sets have them on the module itself. Also, my vertical hold control is on the rear; while the delta gun sets have the control on the front.

This TV has served me well since I got it; but, it's now exhibiting intermittent vertical deflection issues. For the past several days, the picture has been jumpy. Tonight, it lost vertical deflection completely. Vertical sweep returned when I pressed on the vertical hold knob on the back of the set. So, tomorrow, I suppose I'll move the heavy thing off the cart so that I can resolder the connections on the vertical module, clean the controls, and clean and retension the module contacts. This set uses a different vertical module than what is used in the delta gun sets. This TV has the vertical output transistors on the chassis, while the delta gun sets have them on the module itself. Also, my vertical hold control is on the rear; while the delta gun sets have the control on the front.

Thanks for the update. It's funny. I know this guy who will fix ANY, I mean ANY TV model or year, but it MUST be a motel set. When I was having issues with my RCA, he would not even take a look at it. I was even willing to pay him for that. I never really understood the difference between a motel and regular set. Why would someone fix ONLY motel sets, but not any regular sets?

That's strange, since most motel TV's are not much different than regular consumer TV's. Besides some motel TV's having a built in radio, 75 ohm coax input, provision for a theft alarm, or special features in the microprocessor that does not allow any remote to access the menu; they are the same as other TV's.

BTW, I knew a guy who would only work on Magnavox TV's. He worked for a local Magnavox dealer for years and, in the late '70's, he went out on his own and worked out of his basement. If it wasn't a Magnavox set, he wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole. I guess there must have been enough Magnavox set owners to keep him in business because he kept his shop open until around '89-'90. With the current state of TV repair, I don't think you would be able to pick out only one brand to repair. Instead, you'd have to fix as many brands as possible in order to keep your head above water.

Thanks for the update. It's funny. I know this guy who will fix ANY, I mean ANY TV model or year, but it MUST be a motel set. When I was having issues with my RCA, he would not even take a look at it. I was even willing to pay him for that. I never really understood the difference between a motel and regular set. Why would someone fix ONLY motel sets, but not any regular sets?

That's weird as most motel owners are cheapskates when it comes to repairs.Some are so tight they squeak...lol.

That's weird as most motel owners are cheapskates when it comes to repairs.Some are so tight they squeak...lol.

I had a run in with such an owner, back in the early '90's. They owned a bunch of flophouse motels and they had various models of RCA XL-100 19" color TV's that ranged in age from the early '70's up to the mid '80's. They thought I was going to come to the motel, pick up the TV's, fix them, and return them for about $10/TV. I let them know that I wasn't interested in even pulling the back off for $10. They then informed me that they only charged $17/night for the rooms. I think I ended up fixing one or two TV's on site that had minor problems and they ended up giving me 2 or 3 that they didn't want to spend the repair money on. I ended up fixing those and selling them for about $75/each (remember, you could still do that back then).

I had a friend who used to fix TV's for another motel. He said that getting paid wasn't a problem, as long as Americans owned the motel. He said that when the Indians bought the motel, things went down the drain. They'd let half the TV's break before they had any of them fixed. Then, they thought he should fix them for nothing and, many times, he had to stay on their back in order to even get paid. He finally had a belly full and ended up telling them what they could do with their TV's. Those TV's were early '80's 19" Magnavox sets that used the modular T809 chassis. That was the chassis that would eat regulator transistors and there was a 4-lead safety cap in the horizontal output collector circuit that would short. I actually had one of those TV's in my room as a teenager and I used it for several years, until I got tired of repairing the power supply.

I resoldered the contacts and other areas on the vertical module, cleaned the contacts, and bent them slightly so that they would make better contact. Now, vertical deflection seems to be stable; but, it's now rolling vertically after the set has been on for a few minutes. I'm going to replace all of the electrolytic caps on the module. If that does not fix it, I'm going to track down another module.

Here's my current set-up while the Zenith is on the bench. Let's see, I used this '79 GE 12" B&W to watch the "superb owl". Now, It's my temporary "daily watcher". Shoot, maybe I'll just forget about the color TV and just keep using this one. As you can see, it's sitting on an old turntable dustcover, which is all being supported by the TV cart that the Zenith was sitting on. Most people would just run out and buy a new flatscreen when the old set died. Not me! I just go get the little B&W out of the shop.

http://i538.photobucket.com/albums/ff341/radiotvnut/2011_0216GE0001.jpg

OK, I hope it's fixed after re-capping the vertical module and resoldering everything on it.

http://i538.photobucket.com/albums/ff341/radiotvnut/2011_0217zenith0001.jpg

http://i538.photobucket.com/albums/ff341/radiotvnut/2011_0217zenith0005.jpg