Collectible to me: Another Eighties Zenith

[zenith2134]

Greetings everyone. I haven't really posted here because I have not found many sets lately. It is strange because this time last year I couldn't even take all of my finds there were so many. I especially recall a late-70s Magnavox which my friend took; he just had to have this set!

Anyways, on to the real topic of my thread. A few days ago an acquaintance of mine phoned me and said he had a 1982 Zenith 19 inch set, knob-tuner, etc. He said he found it somewhere upstate, and that it was filthy. As reluctant as i was to accept this fantastic offer () I said "Sure man bring it by."

Did I need another non-cable-ready, not-so-vintage, mess of a set, of course not, but it is here with me now. This TV must have sat on the side of a road for weeks. It was filled with dirt and sand, and all the controls were virtually frozen stiff. No rust surprisingly.

I actually spent about 1 hour cleaning it out, blowing debris off the mainboard with a compressor, and cleaning the tuners before it got plugged in.

Well with the fake woodgrain shining in the summer sun, I fired up the beast. Came up with reduced horizontal width, but an otherwise nice raster. The horiz size coil was intermittent and needed some more cleaning. Think it has a 9-246, with the coil mounted up near the anode cap. Maybe the set was thrown upside down into the mud? So now I did the usual setup routine and I've got yet another 80s Zenith workhorse with a strong CRT and an extremely clean cabinet.

I came to the realization that we are in an age where the Japanese won't even be making CRT sets anymore, let alone any American corporation like Zenith. So why not try and preserve as many 20-plus year-old sets as I can? Sure beats the hell out of an Insignia TV/DVD/VHS 20" set that will be obsolete in 2009 anyway... Thanks for yer time folks.