FIRE! 1961 Zenith

[Coshi]

Hello all, I was watching soccer and I started to smell somke, So I shut the TV off, A few seconds latter smoke started to come from the tv, So I pulled it away from the wall and a bright spark shot from behind it and the house fuse blew. I unpluged it and saw little flames from the power cord.

Question is can I just put a thicker power cord on it and bypass the pins on the back?

[maxhifi]

I thought it would be more dramatic Just a loose connection at the power cord.

The purpose of the plug and socket is to prevent people from operating the TV with the back off and burning themselves on tubes.

If you can trust yourself not to do that then any sort of power cord will work just fine - of course, the UL rating of the TV will be violated, but no reason it won't work.

Take the wires on the other side of the socket back to where they aren't crispy and splice in a new cord.

[RetroHacker]

Eek! Depends on what is actually wrong with the set, you might just need a new cord. I'd check it out carefully to ensure that nothing is failing and drawing too much current. But... most likely, the cord itself was just failing. I've not had one catch fire like this, but I've had a couple of cords that have broken down right at the plug due to the wire being flexed for the last 40-something years, and they get really hot. I've also had some that visibly started to crack right at that plug.

I'd try another cord, and carefully monitor the current draw of the set, but, something tells me that the cord itself just overheated from being damaged from age right at the plug.

Do they even still make "cheater cords" any more? I need to get some more myself, I've had to throw out several due to damage right at that plug before, and I have more sets than cords. You can, in many cases, just cram-a-lam a modern two-prong cord like from a PlayStation or a boom box onto the pins on a TV for testing, but it's far from ideal. Heh.

-Ian

[Kamakiri]

Just grab the power cord off your RCA. They should be the same. Wonder how the hell that could have happened?!?!?! It was fine when it left here.....unless it somehow got pinched in transport?

[Coshi]

Yes the rca cord works fine, I was looking over the set to make shure nothing was wrong, I was wondering if you ever opend the HV cage? Because I'm not quite shure how to check in there, because I heard some odd snaping. Just to check make shure nothing is wrong. But again I love it, And everyone is happy that we have a TV again.

[Kamakiri]

Sure did. Everything was fine in there, and as I mentioned, I used the snot out of that set. In fact, here's a shot of me, my son, and my cat curled up around the 1920s kerosene heater watching it during the blizzard back in January

The fact that you heard snapping AFTER you shut the set off, in this case, pretty much limited the issue to the line cord.

I'm just hoping the line voltage issue didn't do something to the flyback. Does anything happen on the screen when you hear snapping?

[Coshi]

So I took a you tube video of whats its doing, And there isn't a snaping so much as a hiss.

Sorry I'm being a bother :/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbVd...ature=youtu.be

[Jon A.]

Originally Posted by Kamakiri

Sure did. Everything was fine in there, and as I mentioned, I used the snot out of that set. In fact, here's a shot of me, my son, and my cat curled up around the 1920s kerosene heater watching it during the blizzard back in January

The white-faced General Instrument cable box and its matching LCC 58 remote make yet another photographic appearance. Very cool.

There was a NOS unit on eBay a while back but I didn't grab it dangit.

[Kamakiri]

That's why we're here

The hiss makes sense. The flyback is arcing to chassis and bleeding off the HV causing a dark picture. Unplug the set, turn it on, let it sit for a couple hours to bleed out (you should technically discharge the anode to ground but we're not gonna have you do more than inspect), then undo the two push pins holding the flyback cover on, which is in the middle of the back of the chassis under the picture tube. I can just bet that the problem is there.

Then, power the set up, and watch from a distance with the lights off and see if you can see it arcing, and where it's arcing to. Might want to pick up a tube of RTV silicone, you'll probably need to seal up the flyback wherever it's arcing from.

[dieseljeep]

Originally Posted by maxhifi

I thought it would be more dramatic Just a loose connection at the power cord.

The purpose of the plug and socket is to prevent people from operating the TV with the back off and burning themselves on tubes.

If you can trust yourself not to do that then any sort of power cord will work just fine - of course, the UL rating of the TV will be violated, but no reason it won't work.

Take the wires on the other side of the socket back to where they aren't crispy and splice in a new cord.

The original idea for an interlocking power cord was to prevent electrical shock, especially on hot chassis sets and from the hv supply.
The cord shown, doesn't look like the original power cord. It could've been a polarized cord, forced on the two same size pins. The same thing, with using a standard power cord, on a set, that takes a polarized cord.
At this stage, just cut the connector off and splice it to the leads, that are soldered to the interlock male connector.

[Coshi]

First off, OW!

Second, It was arcing So I took a very stiff tooth brush to the carbon and cleaned all the dust out. and Put Friction tape around the fly-back.
Turned it on and Tada! Bright picture but no Vertical deflection.

[Kamakiri]

Well, you do have *some* vertical deflection, but the rolled up picture tells me you've probably got a bad vertical oscillator or vertical output tube. Time to pull tubes and test them. You're not far off now....

[dieseljeep]

Originally Posted by Coshi

First off, OW!

Second, It was arcing So I took a very stiff tooth brush to the carbon and cleaned all the dust out. and Put Friction tape around the fly-back.
Turned it on and Tada! Bright picture but no Vertical deflection.

Strange, turns of events, with that set.
The AC cord burning up, shouldn't have anything to do with the vertical sweep.

[Kamakiri]

Originally Posted by dieseljeep

The original idea for an interlocking power cord was to prevent electrical shock, especially on hot chassis sets and from the hv supply.
The cord shown, doesn't look like the original power cord. It could've been a polarized cord, forced on the two same size pins. The same thing, with using a standard power cord, on a set, that takes a polarized cord.

It was the correct type cord. I sold him the TV, and the power cord was disconnected and not in place on the set when it was shipped. The only thing I can think of that it might have happened in the first place is if the cord got jammed in the back hard. I removed the back to install and remove the cord.

[andy]

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