Heloo , New from Illinois
 

Hello everyone . My name is Mac and im from Shelbyville IL .
I have always loved everything old . I bought an old tv , im guessing about a 1957 RCA Victor portable model. I had sent a gentleman i found on youtube a message about repairing it and he kindly directed me to this site.

Im not much of an electronics guy and didnt want to mess with all the caps so i simply bought some new tubes and replaced them since it looked simple enough but i still have the same problems.

Anyways like i said , im not real good with electronics. I did manage to fix about a 1952 zenith console stereo and turn table but it just required a good cleaning and wheels in the turntable " wow those things must be made of gold " ha ha ha . Now when it comes to old cars i have no problem , im currently building 2 55 chevys and have been through enough to make a dealership jealous but these old sets have me a little hesitant about diving in and completely ruining it .

SO thanks for the sight and looking forward to makeing some friends and maybe finding someone who would enjoy tinkering on an old Rca for me.

Dont have a pic of the tv yet , but here are my old hobby projects

http://www.gasserhotrods.com/forum/a...4&d=1292991288

Wow...Kewl Chevys ! You gonna go back stock on the 4-door ? What model/size is yr TV ? If its the 8" portable, those can be a bit tricky for a novice to tackle, since everything's so cramped in there. Anyhow, Welcome to VK !

Hi Sandy . yeah the 4 door is going to be a stock tow car for the 55 gasser. Its my daily driver until i get time to work on it tho ha ha .

I found one on here that it was almost identicle to
http://www.videokarma.org/attachment...6&d=1285170861

Welcome to VK!

:drool: I come from a family of Ford fanatics, but I envy anyone driving a 50s model anything.

Sadly, the days when you could just replace tubes in a set and get it working good as new have passed. I know you wanted to avoid it, but the first thing to do is to replace the capacitors. A handy guide on this can be found here:

Replacing Capacitors in Old Radios and TVs

I'm sure everyone here would be happy to help you get started on that process.

Anyways, welcome aboard!

Heyu thanks! . im a chevy guy through and through but to be honest , when they are that old i think theyre all cool. The 2 door was completley rotten everywhere when i first got it . It should be ready for the drag strip this summer.
The 4 door i bought at a farm auction with no motor or trans . Brought it home and put in a small block and auto , cleaned the lines , rebuilt the brakes and drive it whenever im not working as long as theres no salt on the roads.

The thing is, while some people turn up their noses at 4-doors, they ARE more practical-especially if you have Bambinos, & they generally can be had for less money than their 2-door cousins. Quite frankly, the "Tri-Chevy" that's always turned MY head the most is the '56 Bel Air 4-door hardtop-it just looks SO "Right" to me. Another thing is that Tri-Chevys ARE getting harder & harder to come by, in ANY bodystyle, & A clean 4-door is still better than a trashed 2-door, or a 2-door that's been a "Hot-Rod" for the last 35-40 years...

Welcome to VK :wave: There are a bunch of fellow Illinoisans here.

We painted a 55 sedan for a customer the year before last. Beautiful, all-original 6 cylinder car. He found it in a barn-all it needed was paint. That's a great photo you posted!

One way or another, we can get that RCA going again.

This is the absolute best that i can get the picture tuned in . I get this ghostly double image on both sides. I am using the required transformer and an rf modulator to run the dvd player. But like i said , THis is as good as i can get her tuned in.


http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f1...television.jpg

Best advice is don't plug it in again until you replace the caps - too easy to burn out something irreplaceable.

Guys , as im sure you know there is a TON of caps in this thing . Is there someone that can be hired to recap one ? and if so what is the general charge to do such a job ?

That's a pretty good image as a start. Looks like, for the most part, "all systems are go". Probably just a bad cap in the horizontal oscillator circuit, causing it to run at the wrong frequency, or something along those lines. Could even be just a misadjusted horizontal hold. Some of those have a ton of travel-you can tune them from one picture to seven or eight sometimes! Basically, you would turn it in one direction slowly, and it would go out of sync (just diagonal lines) and then keep turning it and eventually it would straighten up again. If you turned it and ended up with 3 images, you know you went the wrong way. Not all controls will let you go that far, though.

But, you really should have the filter caps replaced, at least. For long term reliability all the caps should go, but those filters are the ones that could burn up your power transformer if they short. A new transformer likely would cost more than the set is worth. There are a lot of members in your part of the country (give or take a hundred miles or so! I didn't look at a map) and I would think somebody would be willing to take care of this for you. Best of luck!

Yup , thats exactly how this one acts , i can start on one side and it will have 4 or 5 images , and if i go all the way to the other end it gets really dim with a small really stacked image that is really clear , and as i slowly start to turn it back ill get a triple image and then this double image you see here, if i keep going to try to get the single image , as soon as the double image leaves you hear a high pitched squeel , its not loud ,really faint but its like its losing the frequency like you said.

Hi Macfrederick and welcome. I too am a long time car guy and have been hanging around here for several years. Read alot of posts, asked alot of questions and next thing I knew I was fixing stuff that I never even thought of fixing a few years ago. Recapping is not so hard once you get a start on something like an old radio. I am over near Quincy IL and was just near your area earlier today.