Repairing Vintage TV's - Comments Invited

[kx250rider]

My opinions have changed over the years. I started working on 1940s TVs in the late 70s & early 80s... At that time, they were only 30 years old, and many times I could just troubleshoot & repair successfully. But along toward the 90s, it started to become clear that trying to do that is futile. Repair one problem in the horizontal, and next you lose video and get a hum bar, etc etc. So now, I just do a physical look-over (for botch work, condition of CRT, missing parts, burnt parts, etc). At that point, I MIGHT try to Variac the set and monitor the B+, and see what happens. But I will not troubleshoot and repair a set. I will recap the entire chassis, and only then troubleshoot and repair whatever the remaining problems are. With great resources like AK, there's no reason to fear doing a full re-cap and discovering you need an IF can, or a flyback. With a little patience, you can get all that stuff.

The only, AND I MEAN ONLY exception would be if the vintage TV has been in somewhat regular use all this time. Then, I might think about a straight repair.

Charles

[damen]

I always check the crt and for burnt parts and if the crt does not come up after a long cook I will rejuvenate it and if it takes and I realy like the set I will proceed . If i see burnt parts I check for avalibility of parts and then i use a variac to soft start. If all looks good I then recap it and hope for the best.

[peverett]

One thing that I do, at least on sets with heavy chassis, is play the restored chassis quite a while before placing it back in the case. This way, if something fails early, the headache of re-removing it from the case is not there.