most disturbing TV experience?

[jpdylon]

I had quite the shocker. One of my portable color sets I picked up not too long ago went south this evening. It was rather disturbing, as something inside the set made a loud POP, and then aparently caught fire. It was a magnavox set.

It took a good 3 hours to air out the room from the burning smell. I pulled off the back and the flyback was near disintegrated and the HO tube was broken What the hell happened? The Fly was never running hot that I could tell.

I'm not really crying about it considering I only paid 4 bucks for it. I took whatever useful parts and tubes out of it I neeed and canned the rest. Man that was a little unnerving. Nothing like a loud noise and a little fire to make you jump from your seat.

Anyone else have a nasty experience with a set like this?

[OvenMaster]

My PC monitor did this three years ago as I was doing some email. BANG!, crackle, suddenly shrunken, dark, flaky image on-screen, and a plume of black smoke coming out the top grille. No flames, but it took a week for the stink to leave the room. Nothing like the aroma of burning insulation!
Tom

[Pete Deksnis]

Prologue.

After waiting six weeks for a new 3-tube Hi Def projection set, it was delivered Dec. 11, 2002.

Six weeks after that it burned a big hole in its 'plastic' chassis.

The smoke spread stink you could smell a week later.


Epilogue.

Service kept it over two months. Finally returned the set April 13, 2003. Screws missing! Case scratched!

By May 14, service was recalled for a convergence problem. In-house alignment.


Epilog^2.

February 15, 2004, service picked up the set again for a week to repair another convergence problem (bad IC this time).

Kindly, RCA had 'recycled' the one-year warranty back to April 2003 and so this all never cost me another scent or a bit of lost CT-100 restoration time, and the set has worked flawlessly since...

[jstout66]

Man.... haven't had that happen with a set. That had to be scary. The only thing I can relate to, is back in the day while working in my Uncle's TV/Appliance store one Saturday afternoon, I was showing a new set. (the store was long and narrow) all of a sudden a huge cloud of black smoke and this horrid stink came rolling down from the front of the store. I took the customer out the side door and went back in the front and propped open the front door. Discovered someone had been playing with a new Amana radar range. It must have been on for quite awhile with nothing in it. It melted the whole inside of the case. The whole inside top of it looked like a melted candle. Also will NEVER forget the smell of burned up flybacks in RCA CTC-38's.........

[Chad Hauris]

This happened to me on a CTC-31 about 15 yrs ago. Left the room and came back and there was no picture (sound was still playing!) and room was full of smoke. The flyback and HV tube socket were totally charred and melted.
I have been putting a 1/2 amp fuse in the cathode of the HO tube on these kind of sets as I think that would open the circuit through the HO tube. I know the old B/W sets often had a fuse in the damper plate B+ input, maybe I should put a fuse here too (or instead).

[kx250rider]

I've had a few sets burst into flames, but never when unattened. The Zenith Chromacolor II sets were constantly having the high voltage tripler burst into flames, but usually would go out as soon as you shut it off. Also the Sylvania Superset of the early 80s did that. The closest for me to having one go out of control was an RCA KCS-49 21" metal-tube console in a wood cabinet with doors... I plugged it in, and evidently the power transformer was shorted on the primary, which caused the on-off switch to burst into flames. The wires nearby caught fire, and it was VERY hard to put it out because where it was burining was way up in front out of reach. I managed to blow it out just in time! If I had been out of the room, it could have been very bad



I also know of house fires that were started by CTC-16s with faulty on-off switches. There was a bulletin about it in the late 70s. I replaced a few of those, in cases where the switch had caught fire, flames traveled up the wires and set the plastic channel drum on fire.

And one more: The Mitsubishi CK-3502. That set is a menace because when the tuning cap in the standy power supply fails, the 5 volt line goes crazy and burns holes all over the place. There is one board with LEDs on it above the screen, and I've seen that one start flaming through the top of the CRT bezel. I had a customer who had to blow out the flames after they came up through the top!

Charles

[roundscreen]

I am glad no one got hurt. Old or new tvs can start fires. In the 80s I had a ctc 15 catch on fire. The cute .047 line filter cap started mine. The cap had a crack in it and it was spitting out a fine line of sparks. Some how the sparks made there way through the screen on the bottom of the set and started the rug on fire. Also I was stupid and was not watching the set at the time. I saw smoke and ran into the front room and the tv, rug and wall were in flames. I pulled out the plug to the set and was filling and throwing buckets of water all over the room and the tv. I was lucky that I was able to put it out. The front room was trashed and the girl I was living with at the time was really pissed off at me. Now I shut the set off when I know I am not going to watch the tv and un plug it. New or old!!!
Ed

[Dave A]

Those same line filter caps on my CT-100 went while I was away one weekend. When I came home I could smell the "old-tv-is-running" smell. The caps dead shorted the set to on and it ran all weekend.

Dave A

[rcaman]

i had a apex tv dvd in the shop yesterday. plugged it up picture came on slightly narrow. then snap crackle pop smoke came out of the cabinet a lot of it. yolke plug had a bad connection and it burned a hole plum through the circuit board. it did stink. but it is all better now fixed and on its way back home. steve

[Chad Hauris]

We always put power line fuses on the equipment we repair (tube radios, phonos, electronic organs) if they don't have them already. Jukeboxes being commercial equipment usually already have one, but we add one to the fluorescent ballast circuit. We just insert an in-the-line fuse holder before the power line cord reaches any components. It just amazes me how a simple little fuse could have prevented fires or major damage on some of these things had the companies had the decency to insert one. Had a case of a Hammond organ where the 5U4 tube was literally melted because of a short...no fuse, the current just kept flowing into the short till the wiring and tube burned out. At least later model equipment (late 60's or so on) usually included a fuse in the power line.
Many of the earlier CTC models had a circuit breaker in the B+ circuit and fusable links on the filament but there really needs to be a fuse on the AC line too.

[Sandy G]

Back about 5-6 yrs ago, when I was young & stupid about TVs, this guy gave me an ancient Motorola. I put it in the Valdez, got it home, ran an extension out to it, plugged 'er in, fired 'er up-and smoke immediately issued forth.. Yanked the plug, took the whole mess out to the Dump, & that was that. Later saw that TV in one of the old TV books, it was a semi-valuable set. Naturally...

[JCFitz]

I have a 1985 Zenith Advanced System 3. The 27" models of these sets which mine is had a problem with the horizontal yoke connectors getting loose from the heat. Apparently the connector wasn't heavy enough and got hot. When they got a bad enough connection they burned a hole in the board. We replaced quite a few 9-454 sweep boards when they were newer and soldered the horizontal yoke wires to the board. Mine is the only one I ever repaired the board.I had to cut about an inch and a half out of the corner of the board and run jumper wires. On my 1st attempt I missed a trace and blew the HO transistor.Had to look everywhere to find an original transistor. Subs won't hold up in this set. I know.Went through a couple of those also. The lady I got the set from was giving it away in her yard sale. She didn't want it in her house anymore. She was afraid it might burn her house down. That tv stunk for weeks even after I got rid of every trace of burnt circuit board. Still going strong 10 years later and it doesn't stink anymore.I've repaired quite a few tvs that had a bad connection in the horizontal yoke circuit.It can burn some nasty holes in circuit boards when this happens.

Another thing I've had happen is a brand new OEM flyback in an RCA PTK195 projection tv blow up with a loud pop. Smoke rolled out the back and stunk up the shop. I was standing right in front of the tv adjusting the convergence when this happened. Sure made me jump. The flyback had a big hole in the side with the windings hanging out and a cracked core. They had a bad run of them a little while ago. There is a rumor that at the factory where they make the parts in Mexico they won't let the workers take bathroom breaks. So they peed in the potting mix and it shorts out the flyback later when it's put in a set. I had another one fail after a week. It was cracked open on the side also.

[Geoff Bourquin]

How about those squar-ish poly caps Magnavox was using in the horizontal circuit in the 80s. (C-8, C-9 chassis, around there) Talk about STINK! I had several occasions when I was still in the truck and knew what was wrong with the set, just from the cloud that was hanging around the house. Sometimes took weeks to get the stink to go away. Some of them burned a hole the size of a quarter in the board when the went.

But perhaps the most disturbing thing was a Mitsubishi projection a couple years ago. The description of the problem was vague, so I opened the front so I could see inside when I powered up to check it out. Hit the power button and the neck of one of the CRTs blew right off! I think it was already cracked, and the shot of high voltage arcing through the crack to the yoke when I powered up finished her off. Fortunatly the crack didn't let the fluid come out. (But I did see a Philips do that last year, but I wasn't there when she let go. Just gave the guy an estimate of $2000, and left. I probably underbid. There was fluid everywhere, of course a lot of it went on the high voltage transformer)

[prewtv]

In my younger days went out on many a CTC-16 to replace switch in the homes,
and then another TV to change 2 safety caps where line cord pluged in with a mirror so chassis didnt have to be pulled out far, and then in Milwaukee area
to service all those super old TVs for those who were part of the AD black out program. Any in the program got TVs fixed for free no matter how old. Got to see many very old TVs from that program.

[willyrover]

Many years ago I was playing around in an old B&W TV. Don't know what I was trying to fix...but grabbed the metal clip under that suction cup looking thing on the tube from the flyback.

Lets just say the needlenoses I was using flew back pretty hard. Right though my bedroom window.