restoration of a beatup Zenith 15Y6C15 - Zenith's first gen 13" color portable

[Electronic M]

Back on October 3rd I went to the fall ETF swap meet and bought a poor abused Zenith 15Y6C15...The deluxe trim version. I bought it from VK member RCA2000 (IIRC for $75). It had spent a long time in his shed and had developed a significant amount of rust; the worst parts being the bottom and back cover. 3 user knobs on the front were missing/incorrect, 2 pencil box knobs are missing. It was full of grass clippings, and cobwebs, and during the test power up after getting it a garden spider whose legs could span a golf ball came stumbling out of it...It did manage a snowy tinted monochrome picture (the TV not the spider ).


I pulled the chassis and gave it a thorough cleaning topside. I also got rid of as many cobwebs with lawn clippings stuck to them as I could without hosing it down (there is still more than I'd like).


All but 3 of the tubes were original Zenith brand tubes Which makes me think this was a low hour set, but strangely the CRT is a Sylvania replacement (must not have been a long lived CRT).

After cleaning the cabinet I got to work on the rust issues. I sanded as much of the rust off the back, bottom and HV cage as I could and sprayed them ( plus the inside of the cabinet, the pencil box door, a bad spot on the chassis side and the CRT shield) with DupliColor Rust Fix. The bottom, HV cage, and CRT shield then got a coat of DupliColor's Lincoln black (I had this stuff left over from a body work project on my Lincoln Mark V that winter prevented starting). The back got a coat of a dark gray....After going to a few places a Duplicolor paint for Toyota was the closest match to the original.

The chassis got some new tubular caps as preventative maintenance, the small lytic can with all the 4uF sections changed (as needed maintenance), the color osc adjusted, the tuners cleaned, the open hum adjust pot changed (it was killing the sound), and the speaker repaired.
The convergence diode pack is cracked, and may benefit from replacement, but is good enough presently that I won't bother.

I'm going to call it done for now.