I think I need another way to go about this.
I have a copy of the SAMS now, and while it has given me information, it hasn't given me the info I need.
So lets try something else: What are all the things that could cause the colors to smear?
Bad CRT? I doubt it because it's plenty bright and there's a lot of headroom on the drive and bias controls.
Bad U1001 IC? I doubt that because otherwise the TV works fine. Tint works fine. Color level works fine. all menus work fine.
Bad capacitors? I have been spot checking them since I did find one that was bad. However that is the only one I have found. All the capacitors in the horizontal and vertical circuits check out. The caps around u1001 check out.
Bad component on the CRT neck board? I have seen color smearing caused by bad electrolytic capacitors on the CRT neck board before. I found one of the old CRT based iMac's that had that issue. However this RCA has no electrolytic capacitors on the CRT neck board. It does have carbon resistors, but the one I spot checked reads fine.
Don't have a CRT tester so can't test it to see if there's an issue with cutoff or maybe a short that's bleeding off the video information?
There's a thought! Yes it is almost like the color information is being bled off.
Here is what I am getting at:
https://youtu.be/hC0yyphcahw
This is a video on a TV with a shorted CRT. shango066 rigged up a way to isolate the short so the TV would work, and you can see near the end of the video, when the CRT shorts it gets all smeared because the video information is bleeding off into the isolation transformer.
I don't think my CRT is shorted. If it was I doubt the TV would even turn on. However I do wonder if the reason the colors are smeared is because the color information is not fully getting through, or it's being bled off by a bad component?