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I got burnt on those Zenith's before I knew better. I'd get one in with a shorted regulator IC and the associated parts that blow up with it. I'd change those parts and the set would work. Within a short time, the set would come back with the same parts blown. I finally figured out that it was the CRT that would intermittently short; which, drew an excess amount of current that would blow up the power supply.
Sometimes, they would fry parts in the video output circuit. I remember one '97 Zenith that came in with no green and the CRT tested fine. I replaced a defective green video driver transistor and the set once again had a nice picture. Two days later, the set was back with no green and the same transistor had failed. Once again, I determined that the CRT was intermittently shorting and causing the problem.
It finally got to the point where I would not accept and of those sets for repair. During the late '90's-early '2000's, I was getting the junk from our none out-of-business Zenith dealer and I got tons of these newer sets with bad CRT's. Sometimes, I'd rejuvenate the tube and sell the set really cheap after explaining to the buyer why it was cheap. Other times, I'd steal a good non-Zenith tube out of something else and that move probably made the set more reliable than it was from the factory. I also got many CCII's and early system 3's that the customers didn't want to spend the money to have them fixed. Those sets were much better than the newer ones and it's rare to find a Zenith delta gun CRT from the '70's that's dead.
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