[Jeffhs]

The Zenith TV being discussed here is a prime example of what happens when too many "bells and whistles" are put on anything. The more extraneous features that are put on anything, be it a TV set or anything else, the more there is to go wrong; that is, the bells and whistles may work very well when the device (TV, etc.) is new, but a few years later the frills start going wrong even though the device itself may still work quite well. I think JCFitz was wise in disconnecting the motors in these sets when the drive mechanism that raised/lowered the screen went bad. I believe his customers were happier with the sets as well with the screens locked in the upright position. One less thing to go haywire in the future.

Mention was also made in this thread of a Zenith projection set with a cracked flyback transformer that was not and has not been available from Zenith for some time. After 25 years, I'm not surprised. I'm guessing this flyback could have been custom-designed for the Zenith "Erector" TV, and so was not available anywhere except from Zenith itself. The part is probably NLA (no longer available) by now if it has been discontinued by the company.

It was also mentioned that the Zenith in this thread was perhaps the worst television receiver design the company ever came up with. For their pre-GoldStar-era televisions this may well be true, but Zenith dropped the ball in the '40s in the worst way as well when they came out with a little four-tube AM radio which was built on a bakelite chassis. As I understand it, these radios worked well enough when they worked but were a royal pain in the you-know-where when they required service. IIRC from what I have read on the Internet about this radio, the chassis was mounted upside down (!) in the cabinet as well. As well-known for quality as Zenith was in that era (and until the '70s when they started using PC boards in radios and circuit modules in televisions), I am amazed they would dare put out such a troublesome product. I don't like condemning Zenith products (I am a Zenith radio collector specializing in antique-vintage sets and have owned several Zenith televisions, including a 1995 Sentry 2 table model I still have that still works very well), but when they designed that 4-tube radio with the inverted bakelite chassis, and 40 years later coming out with a projection TV having a retractable screen that was more trouble than it was worth when the drive belt slipped and/or other things went awry with the drive mechanism, I have to wonder. How could a company founded in the early 1900s (1918, to be exact) make such mistakes--two in 82 years--that would cost them money in repairs, callbacks and the like? Seems to me that the Zenith "Erector" TV may have had more than its share of callbacks to repair the screw drive that raised/lowered the screen. The first time this happened, the set owners would get off easy as they could have the problem repaired under warranty, but if I were a betting man (I'm not), I would bet that the second time this problem occurred, after the warranty expired, the owners simply had the screens locked in the upright position and the motor drive permanently disabled. The TV worked just as well without this mechanism as with it.

As to the weight of the Zenith "Erector" TV (300+ pounds), I'm not surprised that it takes several very strong people to move it.

What goes around comes around; we have come full-circle as far as heavy TVs go. Today's large-screen CRT sets weigh upwards of 150 pounds as well (one recent-vintage Zenith 32" table model I saw in an ad weighed some 200 pounds plus if it weighed an ounce), and large-screen projection sets aren't exactly featherweights either. Don't forget the console TVs of the 1950s through the '70s; these TVs were in wood cabinets and weighed probably 100 pounds if not more. The combo sets with AM/FM radio/phono (tube type with a heavy power transformer) were likely even heavier yet. Even the solid-state consoles by Zenith, Magnavox, et al. of the 1960s-'70s weren't exactly light. The bulk of these sets' weight, aside from the cabinet (which in most 1950s-60s sets was made of very heavy wood), was and is to this day the CRT; the larger the screen, the larger and heavier the tube will be, even though the TV chassis itself in today's sets is just a large PC board.