1960 Zenith B&W Console estate sale find - new project
 

I found a pair of 1960 Zeniths this past weekend and grabbed them both. One works and the other doesn't. I'm going to focus on the working one and see what I can accomplish with it. Thanks to Electronic M for the tip on which cap to start with, and zeno for how to get the chassis out.

This thing was built well, no wonder Zenith is so highly regarded.

Interesting. I’ve never seen a B/w with a cateract before.

Got the cabinet cleaned, it turned out really nice. It had been sitting in a basement so it smelled pretty musty. I used Murphy oil soap on the whole thing inside and out, then Old English scratch cover, then Johnson's paste wax and the cabinet came out great! After that I put it outside on a sunny windy afternoon and now you would never guess it had ever been in a basement.

The brass feet were pretty nasty looking, so I tried the ketchup trick. Coated them with ketchup and let sit for an hour, then rinsed off. It actually worked great - I repeated it twice, then used Noxon 7 metal polish and they came out awesome.

The chassis had a film of junk on it after vacuuming it out, so I used dish soap & water and wiped everything down and it turned out well.

Last thing I did was change the vertical cap and see if that cured the poor height/linearity. It was one section of the can mounted to the top of the chassis and tested open. It's a 100uF @ 50v, I found one on an old circuit board that I had, it tested good so I put it in. Now I have full vertical, but there are two images, one on the top half and one on the bottom. The vertical hold locks in right in the center, and the picture has a strobe effect. I'm going to get a new cap and put it in before I do anything else and see if that gets rid of the weirdness.

Your vertical is running at 1/2 frequency...It is possible that cap has an effect but more likely other caps are failing in the vert multivibrator/osc...Be very careful to not be off value on capacitance when changing caps in the sweep...Doing so can change opperating frequency, mess with linearity and other weird nonsence.

It's good to know what vertical looks like at 1/2 frequency. I'll reconnect the original cap first to confirm that what I did caused this change, then get a new cap in there and see how it looks. Assuming it goes back to how it is now, I should get the Sams for it before I start. I recapped my 1968 Emerson 11" b&w (which is the set that really got me loving TVs again) and having a Sams for it made all the difference.

Be sure the cap is where the old can is. Once I had a similar age 19"
Zenith & just changed the bad section due to the age of the set.
I mounted the new one away from the can in a nice big open spot.
After that the vert blinked sweep/ no sweep / sweep etc rapidly.
D-labs on U tube has a nice can replacement technique using an
octal tube socket. See his videos.

73 Zeno:smoke:
LFOD !

I installed the cap directly under the can. Today I tried a couple things - I jumped the bad section of the can to the replacement cap so the caps would be in parallel and it made no difference. Then I disconnected the replacement, left the original in circuit, and I lost vertical height & linearity again, but it also retained the 1/2 frequency effect. So this appears to be a new symptom. I think recapping the vertical is my best bet at this point.

Back in business!
 

Finally got back to this set. I started testing caps in the vertical. I only tested two - the second one I checked was a .0068 10% that was testing at .01. Replaced it and bingo! Vertical looks great now. The picture is very bright, but looks "soft." I tested the crt a while ago with a Heathkit (pictured) before I got the set going, and it showed good emission but bad cutoff. Does that seem consistent with the image I'm getting?

I got some better pictures to show what I'm trying to describe. I paused the video so I could compare one with brightness & contrast up and the other with them down. Does this look like a tired crt? It just doesn't have the detail that I know it is capable of. To me, it has the "silvery" look that I've seen described on a tired crt, but it also has great contrast so I just don't know.

I think the picture looks quite decent. Lack of detail can be a number of things including poor focus and alignment issues. Best to confirm the circuitry before going on a CRT hunt.

Looks pretty good to me. You could try turning down the AGC a little & see if it helps. Other than that I would live with it.

73 Zeno:smoke:
LFOD !

Thanks guys. I'll call it good then. The main filter can runs warm, about the same or warmer than the power transformer. Is that normal, or am I better off recapping that before I put the chassis back in?

Electrolytics are supposed to run completely cool (unless a very hot tube is next to the can in question)...Any lytic that heats up on its own is going to explode and or take out other more expensive parts.
As a rule, anything pre-1965 change the lytics or at the very least test them for current leakage at full rated voltage.

Good to know, thanks. I have three pre 1965 sets and the two lytics I've changed are the ones that were open. I have a cap tester, but it doesn't test for leakage at rated voltage, so I'm going to need 21 caps to get them all replaced. Do you guys have a favorite place for ordering them? There's an electronic supply store in my city, but they don't have most of what I need.

Mouser, digikey, Newark, Just Radios, Bob's capacitor....