Another Zenith rescued from the dumpster

Just another basket case set that was rescued from the doomed dumpster. Whats really sad is how I ended up with the set that was actually owned by my grandfather. It was given to me by a friend who rescued it from a closing TV shop in south Mpls and the customer tag was still taped to the CRT from 22 years before that said "Rain damaged not repairable called customer and was refused". I looked closely at the tag and it had my grandfathers name and old phone number on it, my mother confirmed it and I made the quest to repair the set. Had a cracked def yoke, lots of bad caps and tons of dust and leaves inside. After a clean out and replacing bad caps it came to life however the flyback stunk and left transformer turds, this is when I noticed the yoke was cracked so I adapted in an Admiral yoke and had to add a couple of caps to the vert coils to dampen the horizontal HF coupling and now the pictures speak for themselves... 22 years after the set was condemned its now going to my mothers to sit on the rolling TV stand from where it came from after my grandparents split up in the early 70's. Is history wierd or what? Enjoy the pics

109

[jpdylon]

Holy chit man, for all that set has been through, that's an awesome screenshot. Cool that it was actually in the family!

[bgadow]

Your grandfather would be proud! Goes to show that a Zenith TV will do its best to work no matter what you throw at it!

[herbman1975]

Nice TV, even better story!

[Sandy G]

Now, THAT'S what I call Karma !! GREAT Karma, at that...

[polaraman]

Charlie and I rescued some televisions from the Texas Tv shop recently. They all still had the repair tag on them and were never picked up. It would have been cool to see if the customers still reside at that address.

Cool story about your set.


polaraman

[Bobby Brady]

I picked up one of those once to repair and for me at 14 it was very heavy.
It was old then and had a weak picture on it.
I think it's a '68 model

[Tony V]

Man what a great story! I know your grandfather would be surprised but proud that you found his old tv after all these years and repaired it too. What are the odds of something like this happening? I love these sets and glad you saved it.
-Tony

[Bobby Brady]

Originally Posted by polaraman

Charlie and I rescued some televisions from the Texas Tv shop recently. They all still had the repair tag on them and were never picked up. It would have been cool to see if the customers still reside at that address.

Cool story about your set.


polaraman

That's how I think! I bet some of them do!

[drh4683]

Great story, great TV. Thats truly a rare set, dual speaker zenith table color. Looks like a '68. Ive never seen one of these in person, what chassis is in there? Im guessing 20Y1C38?

The chassis is a 20Y1C37 (Sams set 932 folder 3) similar to your avatar shot but not as clean. Im still having issues with blue convergance especially in the top corners almost as if its a blue only pincushion problem and adjusting the blue conv controls helps center up the blue but also warps the blue parabolis with respect to red/green in the vert plane, any ideas on this one? It had the same issue before the deflection yoke was changed so I dont think the yoke is the variable but Im baffled a bit more than slightly.

Im also having an issue with red saturation in the chroma channel, luma follows gamma through the range but the red doesnt seem to saturate properly and Ive swapped out the 6ME8 for a NOS tube along with the burst amp, killer and 358 osc tubes but still same issue. Going to work on the set more this weekend then move on to the last dumpster save, Works In A Drawer.

Thanks for the kudos guys, Im not stopping anytime soon here
109

[andy]

Originally Posted by ARC Tech-109

The chassis is a 20Y1C37 (Sams set 932 folder 3) similar to your avatar shot but not as clean. Im still having issues with blue convergance especially in the top corners almost as if its a blue only pincushion problem and adjusting the blue conv controls helps center up the blue but also warps the blue parabolis with respect to red/green in the vert plane, any ideas on this one? It had the same issue before the deflection yoke was changed so I dont think the yoke is the variable but Im baffled a bit more than slightly.

Have you replaced the plastic cased selenium rectifier on the convergence board? My 15" Zenith had convergence problems until I replaced it. It's a common failure. You can construct a replacement out of ordinary silicon diodes. It also had some bad soldering on the convergence board. I had to resolder all of those metal connection points on the convergence board.

[captainmoody]

Nice job getting the set going 109, picture looks great! I am not knocking your job, but before you start rigging up non standard parts for a set, ask Doug, myself, or anyone on this forum if they have the proper ones. Just about anyone here is glad to help others, and most of the time all that we ask is postage for the part! That Zenith yoke is a pretty common one and should be an easy find.

My mom is a bit of a go-getter and doesn't slow down for much of anything let alone a deflection yoke. Her kick is family heirlooms and the fact the set was owned by my grandfather has the fire going that much higher. When my grandfather passed he had another woman living with him and she took most of the estate and hid it for herself so there wasnt much left except his war stuff and a model of his old Harley shovelhead.
Im going to attack the convergance diode stack today along with a couple of resistors that are on the high end of the tolerance. I have a feeling my stock of NOS motorola resistors are going to be depleted by days end.

Does anyone have a yoke and if do you need anything for vintage radio/TV?

109

[captainmoody]

Polaraman, do you think you might have a yoke for 109?