Zenith blonde porthole combination started

[JCFitz]

Starting on the Zenith blonde porthole combo I picked up yesterday. Last night since it had been done already I just plugged in the radio chassis. It fired right up and I got FM reception. The dial cord either came off or broke when I attempted to tune it so I reached in the back and tuned it to the oldies. The controls and selector switches are quite dirty but they work.

AM is dead.No reception or noise at all just a slight hum. The changer works but it looks like it was left on for so long it has developed a flat spot on the idler which thumps every time it goes around. The needle was broken so I popped a new 78 cobra in it and put on a 78. There's lots of static and you can hear the record faintly. The filter can ran quite hot and I could hear and smell it venting a little so it definitely will need restuffing. Might have been ok if I had formed it,maybe not since it may already have been bad or damaged from his power up. So at least the radio chassis works somewhat.


On to what eveybody is waiting for,the tv section. I powered the crt at first at very low voltage to check for filament and that it didn't show signs of glowing bright and burning out which meant it was under vacuum. No problems there. Brought it up to 4v and it was already well within the good, 6.3v brought it up to near 900 0n the scale of my B&K 465.


Went and found a strong 5U4,nos 6BF5 and the only 5Y3 I had which only comes up to 40%. Good enough for testing. Brought it up slowly. Got to 90v and could hear the horizontal whistle and drew a small arc from the rectifier lead of the flyback.After that I turned it back down as the main filter on the power supply was starting to run hot. I'll let it run a while at 40V until it cools down and try to bring it up more slowly. The filters on the tv chassis were cool to the touch. I also heard some static when I turned the volume control so the audio amp is alive. This set just might produce a raster before recapping it yet.It might even work.