I think 1987 is too early for the CTC-169....I'm betting 140. Great sets. The two most common problems I've seen:
Bad solder connections, and occasionally a bad diode on the diode SIP board. It's a little board about half way along the right edge (viewed from the back) of the PC board. It stands upright and is about 2 inches wide, and has 3 diodes on it. Lots of intermittents come from there.
Second is a cracked surface mount capacitor near the IF chip. Causes lots of squiggly lines and stuff when it fails, and of course it heals up for a while as soon as you touch it. Only a problem if you are using the tuner input.
If you ever work on it for anything else, resolder the horizontal drive transformer and the coil between it and the horizontal output transistor base.
(actually, do that on any set you work on......high failure rate area on lots of sets.)
There are a few other spots around the flyback where the solder sometimes gets nice and crispy. You'll know them when you see them.
I think you'll like that set. I still see them sometimes and most of them still have pretty strong CRTs.
