16" Zenith Porthole in PA ...

[cwmoser]

Looks complete, says make offer.
Looks about the same condition as my "Cinderella".
Lot of work but an enjoyable process.

So what is this Porthole really worth?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/vintage-ZENI...item5d32c01302

Carl

[Phil Nelson]

Complete, some rust, grille cloth ruined = $200 max in my miserly worldview.

"FOR SOME REASON IT KICKED OFF MY BREAKER IN THE GARAGE"

At least he pulled the plug before flames shot out .

To me, that says short circuit, likely bad filter cap in power supply.

I assume his offer of free shipping for this heavy item applies only if you pay his price of $550+.

Phil Nelson

[David Roper]

Tom Electronic Memory got that same set in almost identical cosmetic condition at the ETF auction for $20--and his works.

I'd pay maybe 2% of the asking price for the organ harvesting potential.

[cwmoser]

Originally Posted by David Roper

Tom Electronic Memory got that same set in almost identical cosmetic condition at the ETF auction for $20--and his works.

I'd pay maybe 2% of the asking price for the organ harvesting potential.

Tom got an exceptional deal - the story is worth more than the $20 he paid for it:=) If I recall, it was not working and the presumption was that the CRT was bad. He got lucky and got the CRT rejuvenated and did some more work to get it working. Need Tom to clarify. Tom's porthole is a real deal and a very unique story.

I think I saw Tom's Porthole in the 2011 Auction video that was posted on the Internet. It shows that no one was going to bid on it and the auctioneer was going to mark it a No Sale until Tom spoke up and said he would take it and he got an immediate SOLD. Tom, tell us some more about that Porthole.

Carl

[Electronic M]

If I recall correctly, I went to the 2011 ETF meet looking for either a Zenith Porthole or a projection set. I believe that the auction was just starting when I arrived. I bid on, and won a small Emerson projection console that I was disappointed to find was missing it's protelgram projection unit. I was busy looking that over as the auction went through some isles I had little interest in, and soon it moved to where the zenith was. I was a ways off as the porthole went up for bidding, and got there just after it got passed. I made an offer 10$ lower than the price it passed at to the auctioneer, and got a counter 5$ higher which I took (paid 20$ for it ).

Not long after the auction my friends Nick and Mark (Miniman82 and Zenithfan1 respectively) tested out the CRT in the Porthole and found it to be dead. Mark brought the tester (Sencor CR-71) and Nick figured out the universal adapter. I recall Nick saying they thought they had the connections wrong because the needle on the CR-70 would not budge. I'm surprised that Nick helped because he had just won a 21-CT-55, and anything that awesome is difficult for one to pull one's own attention from (in his shoes I sure would have cared more about that 21-CT-55). They left it to cook at increased filament voltage for a few hours. I was disappointed to have what seemed to be two sets that would need hard to get parts. I could not fit both sets in the C-RV so I decided that if the porthole's CRT did not respond to rejuvenation I'd sell or give it to whomever wanted it and take the projection set. At least two people said that they either had a spare protelgram or that it would not be tough to find one, so given how difficult to find and sought after 16" metal CRTs are, if both sets NEEDED new CRTs (a protelgram unit contains the CRT and most of the projection optics) the Emerson's would have been easier to get. After the presentations the tube was checked again and had gone from 0 emission to bad emission. Some more cooking and a cleaning on the CR-70 and the emissions with the filament above spec voltage were in the good range and at spec filament were in the bad range.

That made up my mind that the porthole was coming back home with me. I sold the Emerson the next day and returned home to Wi. Sometime after I arrived I put the set in the garage, and eventually got to testing it.

The pencil box door was (and still is) gone, the audio output tube was MIA, and the volume knob was gone(I got one from a good person over at ARF soon after). Aside from the replacement signal tubes, the brightener, and 3-5 brown drops from (I'd guess) a 60's-70's repair it was completely stock.
Since one of the pins on the chassis half of the safety interlock is busted I had to rig up a make shift "idiot killer" cord. I connected it to a variac and brought it up to voltage VERY slowly. I was rewarded with a raster, and cold lytics. I say cold because it was spring jacket weather and the garage it is in is unheated.

After the initial raster was (unexpectedly) obtained I either connected a handy VCR during that power up or did so during the next power up. Figuring "the lytics are cold...what the heck lets see how much it can do" I connected the VCR and tried CH3......Nothing. So I switched the VCR and TV to CH4 and had video. After adjusting the brightness, contrast, and hold controls I had a surprisingly good picture (see photos)! I had ran the set no more than 20 min on the longest of several power ups up to this point. I found a spare audio output tube and next power up watched the better part of Star Wars IV, with good sound, on the old girl with only a pinch of control tweaking throughout the 1.5+ hour I ran it, and the lytics were still cool at the end!




I haven't really run it or worked on it since then. It's speaker grill, cabinet, and mask are slightly worst than the set in the first post BTW. It will be awhile before school and other things permit me to start working on it again. Part of me would like to leave it as is to show just what rugged reliability Zenith put in to it.

Zenith the quality stays in (even) after the name falls off!

[cwmoser]

I would restore it and preserve the story. But, if you leave it like it is, I would put in some fuses. Hate to see you burn up something that would prevent this old girl from ever playing again.

Carl

[Electronic M]

I'll probably give it a cosmetic resto, restuff any papers that look like they have heated up (ie bubbling wax on the tube melted ends etc.) if there are any, clean tuner and controls, add fuses to the flyback and vertical output transformer.....That is when it reaches the to of my resto cue.

I have a Heathkit cap checker so I'll probably test what is there electrically and replace the worst testing ones.

[Phil Nelson]

Originally Posted by Electronic M

restuff any papers that look like they have heated up (ie bubbling wax on the tube melted ends etc.)

You can't tell anything about a cap's condition by its appearance. It may look factory fresh, yet leak like crazy. The deterioration is caused by aging as moisture invades the wax and paper, not by heat or use.

I have a good cap checker, but I don't bother testing old paper caps because so many are bad. In the time it takes to check one, you could have replaced it. There is nothing you can do to arrest future degradation in old caps that you leave in place, so doing a half-baked job only ensures that you will be hauling the chassis back onto your workbench again and again.

Phil Nelson
Phil's Old Radios
http://antiqueradio.org/index.html

[Electronic M]

It works almost perfectly on it's original caps (minus 3-5 drops from an old repair), and could have been parted out or junked if I had not bought it. I rarely use my monochrome sets so this set does not NEED to be reliable. I was planning on keeping the still usable original parts for as long as possible to see how much longer they last.

This set will probably be more of a test bed/example set than a "daily driver". That is until enough of the original parts go south for me to say it has become impossible for me to keep it working on mostly original caps.

If I fuse key parts and never take my eyes off of it when running, then there is little chance of doing harm to hard to find parts.

[David Roper]

If I fuse key parts and never take my eyes off of it when running, then there is little chance of doing harm to hard to find parts.

If you don't fuse key parts (power transformer comes to mind) your post otherwise reads as more or less "Recapping can wait til I see smoke"

[Sandy G]

Uhh, yeah...I was kinda thinkin' when reading yr post-"Famous Last Words"....

[Kamakiri]

Originally Posted by Electronic M

Zenith the quality stays in (even) after the name falls off!

Best quote I have ever heard on Videokarma! If nobody steals that as a signature line, I'm gonna!!!! HAHAHHAHAHAHA