Chromacolor Flower power!

[zenithfan1]

I bought this set from Mike aka radotvnut out in NJ. I've had it awhile and have only "tinkered" with it a few times. It is a '72 Zenith Chromacolor 18 in. The reason I dubbed it the "Flower power" is because of the flowers that someone painted on it years ago. I was going to remove them but a close look told me someone spent quite a bit of time painting them so I left it that way. Mike told me that an old lady who was an artist used to own the set and those flowers have been there since the '70s when she owned it. My 5 year old daughter fell in love with the flowers so I gave the set to her, I just have to fix it. I am getting closer. The thing was well packed but as usual, the shipper threw the thing around causing a piece to break off of the cabinet, that was glued back on with industrial strength super glue that I get from work {you can order it through Kimball Midwest} There were three bad tubes IIRC, a 9MN8, 15MF8 and a 6U10. I also replaced the high voltage tube socket and cup with a NOS one from Chesters Electronics. When I first powered it up I could hear the HV hissing, I took the can apart and found that it was ready to burn my house down, it was arcing all over the HV rect. tube and melting the plastic HV cup. The HV tube cap was also badly melted, corroded and scorched. I replaced it by stealing the one from the fly from my '65 Admiral roundie as I just replaced the fly in it, I'm glad I didn't throw it out yet! Also replaced was a 300 MFD@200VDC cap and two NTE 116 diodes that were attached to the positive side of that 300MFD cap. The thing is working now but still has issues, I tested the CRT with a Sencore CR70 it passed all of the shorts,emissions and color tracking tests, on the life test the needle did not drop at all. I can rule that out as far as the brightness problem. I think it lies somewhere in the chroma or brightness curcuits. When the brightness is up all the way it is possible to watch it but is real dark in the low light areas of the screen blacking out the darker details of the picture. The brightness is only acceptable when the color is turned to 3/4 of the way. when you turn the color down, the brightness goes with it. It seems like a leaky cap in that area to me but I could be wrong. I'll keep messing with it, maybe someone here knows what's wrong. There is also one more thing, after I rebuilt the HV section, I still only get 19.5 KV when it calls for 21.5 with the setup switch in the set up position and contrast and brightness all the way down. It is much better than it was, it read 18KV before the repairs. I was a little disappointed when the voltage didn't come up as it should. I know this can cause brightness/focus issues as well. Any tips would be appreciated.



The speaker was also broken from it's mount.


Glued in nicely.


I tried to remove the carbon tracking but the cup was too badly burned.

The old cap and diodes, the diodes had become red hot. They were covered in soot.

I picked this stuff right off the shelf in Chesters.