So, what did Zenith do to make their CRT's fail quicker?

[zenithfan1]

Originally Posted by nasadowsk

Let's see:

HP print cartridges that stop working after X pages, even if there's still ink in them...

Cars that turn on the check engine light every X miles to 'remind' you to replace the perfectly ok O2 sensor..

Sealed automatic transmissions, so you can't change the fluid and if there's a leak, you can't add any - new GMs are this way...

The infamously marginal timing belt on Hondas...

Lawnmower engines with plastic camshafts...

My other favorite is car parts where there's one REALLY marginal part, but you can't just buy/replace that, you have to buy a whole assembly.

Even nastier - I tried to get a manual for my new car (Mustang). Factory one? Nope - Ford wanted - get this - $10,000 for the manual set.

He's right, everything is designed to break now days. I had some of those lawnmower engines. Here is what they said on the top: 5.5 Hp Commercial grade. These were made by Briggs & Stratton. Cam lobes made of plastic. The tappets and valve stems are also thinner than a pencil. They used to be as large or larger even on a little 3hp. Every time I get one of these, the valves are shot and there is no compression. Pure garbage. The old Briggs engines are built like tanks. They just don't want smart people to fix things anymore, they want us to be consumers and nothing more, at the mercy of shops and companies raping us for money with little we can do about it. That is why I'm vintage all the way. I'm not playing their games. I work too damn hard for what money I get.

[MRX37]

I found my Snapper lawnmower in the garbage. all it needed was the pull string spring lubricated.

I also have a John Deere push mower from 2006 that has much more plastic, a thinner pull cord, and a hard to find oil drain plug (it's under the mower, easily hidden by grass buildup). I had to change the spark plug, and fix the throttle cable on it. The damn thing wasn't even 2 years old when I found it!

My snapper mower is probably a good 20+ years old, and the only maintainence I do to it is change the oil regularly, which is easier because the drain plug is easy to spot. It hasn't needed a new spark plug yet either.

[ChrisW6ATV]

Originally Posted by Carmine

my parents bought my grandparents a 1993 27" Zenith based on the excellent performance of their 1990 27" Zenith (which is still my main TV). When the newer set died, Zenith was off the shopping list.

My mother had a poor experience with Delta Airlines in 1963, and she would never fly on them again, and she lived until 2005.

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by radiotvnut

There's a slight chance that your tube was made by someone else besides Zenith. I seem to remember seeing a couple Zenith's from this period that used the bonded yoke style CRT's like what Thomson/RCA used. Some of the last Zenith CRT sets used Philips CRT's. Or, maybe Zenith "screwed up" and actually made a good tube. It happened once in a blue moon.

My Zenith Sentry 2 19" table set is 14 years old and still has the original CRT. As the previous poster described, the tube in my set is as strong and bright as when I got the TV. I also have a 9-year-old RCA CTC185A7 XL-100, with the original CRT and a fantastic picture. The Sentry 2 is in my bedroom and doesn't get much use (was my main watcher from 1995-1999, then I bought the RCA when I moved here in '99), but I use the RCA most of the time, mostly these days for watching the news and DVDs/VHS videos.

I'm almost convinced that I got a good CRT in my Zenith purely by the luck of the draw, considering all the problems Zenith had with CRTs in their televisions from 1990 on. However, I'm not surprised my RCA's CRT is still good and still makes a picture as nice and sharp as you please. The failure mode of most RCA TVs of the early nineties was not, as a rule, the CRT; rather, the onboard tuner becoming ungrounded (through bad solder joints) and bombarding the jungle IC (EEPROM) with noise and ruining it in short order was a major problem until the CTC203 and its successors, as in these sets the tuner is mounted separately from the main board. However, a friend of mine told me his parents had an RCA Guide Plus 25" TV in which the CRT failed after just two years. They bought a new set, same screen size, that worked right out of the box and is still working today, some five-plus years later; no CRT problems or chassis faults. An interesting side note: This TV actually fell off its stand several years ago, but again is still working; the CRT shadow mask apparently wasn't bent when the set hit the floor. I had the same experience last year, with my RCA XL-100 CTC185. However, I was able to eliminate the color splotches in the picture by running a magnet from an old loudspeaker around the screen.

[bgadow]

The Zenith we all knew and loved overbuilt its sets compared to the competition. By the 80s TV sets were becoming a commodity. Why buy the Zenith when the store down the street has a FlungDung that does the same thing: it has a decent color picture and the same basic features, yet costs $100-200 less? Zenith had to change; it had to cut costs. It moved production to Mexico. It lost ground on R&D versus the competition. At some point, faced with an uncertain future, they had to cut more corners. From what I have read, the '93+ crts were designed to be just as good, or even better, but be cheaper to make. Even if the crts had been good, those sets were far from the best on the market. From what I've seen an RCA/GE from that era was a vastly better set. The sad thing is that Zenith was probably the most common brand being sold by independent dealers. I've spoken with several guys who sold only Zenith in later years because of easy parts availablity and the fact that they catered to the small shops. All those little guys then had to deal with unhappy customers.

I really don't think there was any malice on Zenith's part. In the situation they were in c.1992 the only other choice may have been to close the plant and buy all their tubes elsewhere.

Oh, why is there crap like plastic camshafts and FlungDung TV sets? 'cause that is what people buy. The next time you're in WallyWorld, take a look at the lawn mowers. Now, had did they get them that cheap? Compare the price of a no-frills push mower to the cost of a new 3.5hp motor out of a catalog. The money is in volume; the volume is in cheap. This is not new...it is older than any of us having this conversation.

[MRX37]

So, the answers I've gotten range from LG sabotaging their CRT's, to Zenith cutting corners and trying to make a cheaper decent CRT but failing miserably.

Any other theroies, or better yet maybe someone here worked at Zenith during the 90's, or knows somebody who knows somebody who knows somebody who worked there during the bad CRT era.

[AndyMack]

Anybody remember the notorious bad solder joints between boards in late 80's vintage RCA sets? I was the CE at a hotel that had 145 of these sets, all manufactured in 1989. (I forget the model #, silver XL100 set with analog AM/FM radio). Anyways, right about the end of 92 and into 93 I spent plenty of days fixing these darn sets - which never really had a single component failure that I can remember - just bad solder joints throughout. But with that experience, I have never purchased an RCA or GE set either for work or personally since.

The next facility I took care of had 85 Zenith 25" Concierge sets m'fd in 1995, and I rarely had a problem with those for the two and half years I was there. Sometimes the Smartcards would need to be reinstalled (sorta like a reboot), but that's it.

The place I'm at now had all 1996 vintage mexican-made Zenith HealthView sets, and those were problematic - either bad modules or the CRT's would go south, sometimes both. But those had high hours. Most of those are gone now, but we still have a dozen or so of those old sets still in daily use with the original CRT's. Couldn't even guess how many hours are on 'em. I spec'd out newer Philips 19" commercial TV's, and we purchased about 15 of them several years back. Those are all going strong with great pictures and no servicing req'd. The rest are all just LG/Zenith HealthView's, same exact model that we've used all along. The bean counters insist we keep buying them. The newer ones are hit & miss, a few have died outright within months, I've seen two with bad guns within a year, but most are still OK after a few years of service.

[radiotvnut]

Originally Posted by AndyMack

Anybody remember the notorious bad solder joints between boards in late 80's vintage RCA sets? I was the CE at a hotel that had 145 of these sets, all manufactured in 1989. (I forget the model #, silver XL100 set with analog AM/FM radio). Anyways, right about the end of 92 and into 93 I spent plenty of days fixing these darn sets - which never really had a single component failure that I can remember - just bad solder joints throughout. But with that experience, I have never purchased an RCA or GE set either for work or personally since.

The next facility I took care of had 85 Zenith 25" Concierge sets m'fd in 1995, and I rarely had a problem with those for the two and half years I was there. Sometimes the Smartcards would need to be reinstalled (sorta like a reboot), but that's it.

The place I'm at now had all 1996 vintage mexican-made Zenith HealthView sets, and those were problematic - either bad modules or the CRT's would go south, sometimes both. But those had high hours. Most of those are gone now, but we still have a dozen or so of those old sets still in daily use with the original CRT's. Couldn't even guess how many hours are on 'em. I spec'd out newer Philips 19" commercial TV's, and we purchased about 15 of them several years back. Those are all going strong with great pictures and no servicing req'd. The rest are all just LG/Zenith HealthView's, same exact model that we've used all along. The bean counters insist we keep buying them. The newer ones are hit & miss, a few have died outright within months, I've seen two with bad guns within a year, but most are still OK after a few years of service.

I remember the late '80's RCA's with the MTT tuner module that always had bad solder connections on the plugs and the wirewrap stakes. These would have been in late production CTC120, CTC130, and CTC136 chassis sets. The older RCA's with the MSC tuner controller and MST tuner module suffered from the same problem. The solder problems with RCA really took off with the introduction of the CTC175/76/77 chassis in '92 or '93 and continued thru the later production CTC203's when RCA finally got sense enough to use a seperate tuner instead of their lousy "tuner on board" design. Those sets are usually good after the tuner grounds are resoldered. The main component failures I've experienced were bad eeproms (due to bad connections), shorted HOT, defective regulator IC and shorted B+ rectifier, and the occasional bad flyback. Once RCA started using a real tuner again, their flybacks started going south way too soon! Go figure!

One of our local hospitals had those Zenith healthview sets like you mention. I wound up with a few of them that had, of course, bad CRT's. Years ago, another hospital had a bunch of mid '70's 19" Sylvania's with motorized tuning (heavy as lead and probably their best sets). Those were replaced in the late '80's by 20" Magnavox cable ready sets. Those sets were recently replaced by Philips BPC sets. I wonder if they'll last 20 years like the previous Magnavox sets.

[Geoff Bourquin]

Unless I missed something, everyone in this discussion has only talked about Zenith CRT problems around 1992-'93. By 1990 I was seeing Zenith tubes fail faster than I could haul the carcasses away, starting with sets from '87 and '88. Lots of H-K shorts, and lousy emission.

RE: CTC120-136 chassis. I got in the habit of resoldering those wire wrap stakes on every one of those sets, no matter what I was asked to fix. Kept the callbacks down to near zero.

Re: CTC175+ tuner-on-board: I hated it because it was a stupid design, not having wires to backup those tabs on the shield to tie grounds together, AND I loved it because I have earned tens of thousands of dollars fixing them. At one time I had a running count going on how many I had fixed. I lost track at almost 600 units, but I was still fixing those then so the total is higher than that. ( I still see one from time to time)
At the Thomson training session that covered those (spring of '93 I think) several of us went to the FSM and expressed our concern about that design during the lunch break. We were assured that the engineering guys had tested the design and the grounds would not fail as they had been doing in Zenith and other tuners. AS he said that , I had the feeling that he didn't really believe it, but he had to say it.

Plastic camshafts in lawnmowers??!!! I was not aware of that, but it sure explains a lot! I have seen plastic pistons in brake calipers. Wont use them again. I've had 2 of them warp and bind in the bore. Sure made the van steer funny!

Re: Sony blanking until the tube is warmed up. I recall Sony did issue a mod for those sets to reduce the blanking sensitivity. I think late production sets came with it from the factory but early models were extra touchy and changing a resistor or two helped.

OK. I'm done now.

[radiotvnut]

Originally Posted by Geoff Bourquin

Unless I missed something, everyone in this discussion has only talked about Zenith CRT problems around 1992-'93. By 1990 I was seeing Zenith tubes fail faster than I could haul the carcasses away, starting with sets from '87 and '88. Lots of H-K shorts, and lousy emission.

I too remember a fair amount of late '80's-early '90's Zenith tubes being bad; but, the problem really took off around '93. Really, here are my experiences with Zenith CRT's:

1. Delta gun tubes from the '70's almost never went bad. Even to this day, they are still very watchable.

2. The first inline tri-pot tubes used with the system 3 chassis were not as good. The 13", 17", and 19" held up pretty good but I've seen plenty of weak 23"/25" ones.

3. Same story on the COTY (?) tubes from the early '80's thru the early '90's.

4. And, we already know about the early '90's and up.

[rcaman]

Originally Posted by David Roper

My System 3 27" set mfd in 1996 has had as much use as you would expect a primary set of 12+ years to have and is bright as the day it was delivered. I guess it failed to fail.

i have worked on zeniths that had rca tubes in them maby yours has a thomson tube in it. steve

[Trance88]

When I was in 9th grade back in '03-'04, my high school consists of a separate freshman campus building from the main high school building for 10-12 graders. The freshman campus building used primarily Zenith sets in all the classrooms which were from around 1994. These sets were still going very strong back in 2006, which was the last time I ever went to the freshman campus. Many of them are constantly used on a daily basis to display daily announcements and stuff like that.

I was very impressed with the picture and sound quality of these sets too.

[Trance88]

Originally Posted by AndyMack

Anybody remember the notorious bad solder joints between boards in late 80's vintage RCA sets? I was the CE at a hotel that had 145 of these sets, all manufactured in 1989. (I forget the model #, silver XL100 set with analog AM/FM radio). Anyways, right about the end of 92 and into 93 I spent plenty of days fixing these darn sets - which never really had a single component failure that I can remember - just bad solder joints throughout. But with that experience, I have never purchased an RCA or GE set either for work or personally since.

The next facility I took care of had 85 Zenith 25" Concierge sets m'fd in 1995, and I rarely had a problem with those for the two and half years I was there. Sometimes the Smartcards would need to be reinstalled (sorta like a reboot), but that's it.

The place I'm at now had all 1996 vintage mexican-made Zenith HealthView sets, and those were problematic - either bad modules or the CRT's would go south, sometimes both. But those had high hours. Most of those are gone now, but we still have a dozen or so of those old sets still in daily use with the original CRT's. Couldn't even guess how many hours are on 'em. I spec'd out newer Philips 19" commercial TV's, and we purchased about 15 of them several years back. Those are all going strong with great pictures and no servicing req'd. The rest are all just LG/Zenith HealthView's, same exact model that we've used all along. The bean counters insist we keep buying them. The newer ones are hit & miss, a few have died outright within months, I've seen two with bad guns within a year, but most are still OK after a few years of service.

I'm guessing all hotels these days are quickly switching to the plasma widescreens. Who knows what kind of problems could pop up in these!

[wa2ise]

Originally Posted by Trance88

The freshman campus building used primarily Zenith sets in all the classrooms which were from around 1994. These sets were still going very strong back in 2006, which was the last time I ever went to the freshman campus. Many of them are constantly used on a daily basis to display daily announcements and stuff like that.

My grammar school had B&W sets installed when NYC's educational channel 13 (ancestor of PBS) went on the air around 1961 or so. These sets were rarely used, maybe they saw 10 hours a year. We did watch some badly written anti-drug shows (just like sex ed at the time, they didn't want to really say what they were talking about).

[rat fink]

Originally Posted by zenithfan1

He's right, everything is designed to break now days. I had some of those lawnmower engines. Here is what they said on the top: 5.5 Hp Commercial grade. These were made by Briggs & Stratton. Cam lobes made of plastic. The tappets and valve stems are also thinner than a pencil. They used to be as large or larger even on a little 3hp. Every time I get one of these, the valves are shot and there is no compression. Pure garbage. The old Briggs engines are built like tanks. They just don't want smart people to fix things anymore, they want us to be consumers and nothing more, at the mercy of shops and companies raping us for money with little we can do about it. That is why I'm vintage all the way. I'm not playing their games. I work too damn hard for what money I get.

I have found that I stopped having stuff break when I started buying vintage. I drive pre-75 cars and trucks, use 60's era yard equipment, 40's era tools, so on and so forth. I also implemented a rule that I would never let anybody else repair my stuff again, (except tire stores). The only things in my home that might be new are computer parts, but I research them before I purchase. I haven't had to fix anything in a long time.