'91 Zenith Tuning Problem

[bgadow]

This is one of the free sets I picked up the other day, and the only one with a problem. Model SS1909S, main board (only board!) is 9-592-04. I'm not looking to devote a lot of time to this since I'll just be giving it away. When I first powered it up the tuning was very weak on vhf, and uhf had problems too. I pulled the chassis and soldered the mount lugs for the tuner. (hairline cracks) This improved things; trouble is that the strong local stations are, I guess, overloading. I get a dark picture which will not sync horizontally. The weakest of the locals will, after a second, sync and then the picture is fine. I centered my efforts around the aft button-press it once and the channel display reads what I guess is supposed to be 'S' and press it again and I get 'F'. I figured they stood for slow & fast, maybe for manual fine tuning? Nothing I press while those letters display will do anything. Anyway, is this a common problem with a simple solution? If not then I guess it's not long for the world. Typical Mexican built cheapo Zenith; does have a made in USA crt, and I think this was just before they went to crap.