Importance of a clean chassis

[Charlie]

A couple of months ago, my mid-80's CM 19" color set started having a problem. The green would go away for a few seconds and then come back. It started getting worse... happening more often and for longer periods of time. Eventually, it got to where the green was missing most of the time.

I took it apart and tried spraying some cleaner on the screen control and worked it back and forth. While in there, I took a small brush and vacuum to the boards and and put it back together. Worked like a champ... for a couple of days. THen it started all over again... a little at first and got worse as the days passed.

Went back in... this time resoldering some connections in case of cracks in the old solder. Also worked all the wire connections. Put it together and worked again... and again just for a couple of days. Damn!

Third time turned out to be the charm. This time, I looked at the boards a little closer. Still could see some dust around caps and resistors. I didn't have any cans of air, so instead I grabbed a can of cleaner without oil and sprayed the main board down. Cleaned it up pretty good and put it back together.

Again, it worked. But this time, it's been 3 weeks, and so far I haven't seen the green tweak out at all. It's been perfect.

Even better, something else got fixed. For years, it had some squiggles at the bottom of the screen. If there's any vertical lines in the picture, you can see where they get out of whack in the bottom inch of the picture. Not bad, but just enough to notice them. Any fine print at the bottom during commercials is usually difficult to read. I always figured it was due to some anomaly in the yoke or flyback. Come to find out, after spraying down that board, those little squiggles went completely away! Bottom of the picture is perfect.

I always clean out a set, but taking it a little further this time was what it needed. It's amazing what just a little bit of dust can do if it's in the right spot.