Motorola VT71 in Italy

[Giulio Maiocco]

Hello guys,

I saw some time ago you were talking about the silly price a Motorola VT71 went for on Ebay, well, I just finished the restoration of this TV set for my friend Angelo (Ferrari on this forum), and I would like to ask you a couple questions, if you don't mind.

During the restoration of this chassis, it became clear to me that this chassis never worked out of the factory! In fact, I found that the wire coming from the 110Vac plug and going to the ballast socket was soldered to pin 6, and on the correct pin 5 (just look at the ballast pinout and it will be clear what I'm talking about...)there is absolutely no evidence this pin was ever touched! How common is to find this kind of mistake? As is, the TV is pratically NOS! The chassis itself and the copper plating are still looking very good

Someone in the past (but I think no more than 10 years ago anyway!!) tried to restore this chassis, doing, in all honesty, a poor job for my standards, but I think he/she left the restoration halfway, probably after discovering it was impossible to power up the TV. The original metal housed ballast failed because of corrosion/oxidation of the crimped connection to the resistive wires, but the mica supports are still very clean, usually the mica assumes a brownish color when heated for a long time. In your opinion, is it possible to fix the original ballast (i.e. spot welding the resistive wiring to the connections on the socket or...)?

At this point, I think also the CRT is NOS, the raster and the image are both very bright and very well focused, am I right to assume this??

Thanks

Giulio Maiocco