1953 Arvin 8213 Restoration
 

Guys I found the cabinet and a donor chassis. This thread will be on the restoration and marriage of both.

I got the cabinet but it didn't have the chassis or speaker. I then bought an Arvin console TV from the same year. Both TV's are 21". Both had all glass picture tubes in them. Rider's says they should have 21MP4 metal/glass CRT's. More on that a little later.

Here is the cabinet:

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Here is a picture of the backside of the donor.

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The cabinet CRT had this label on it:

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Sure enough I confirmed that it was a 8213 that we had growing up.

Now some pictures of the chassis.

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When I bought the console I noticed that the HV cage cover was missing. We looked at another Arvin console the guy had and sure enough that cage was missing too. After getting it home and pulled out of the cabinet, it was apparent why it wasn't there. Both TV's originally came with a 21MP4 a metal/glass CRT. Both of these TV's had all glass CRT's. They were 21ZP4A and a 21ZP4B. The glass tubes were larger and the retrofit required "modifying" the HV cage.

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Of course I'll rework the cage by putting on a sloped corner and cover.

Here is the standard bottom picture of the chassis. Not bad.

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Yeah, there were rodents here one time.

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Another challenge will be because this chassis really isn't the correct one, it is not a slip fit in. The front controls are about 1/2" high. Looks like I could lower them without too many problems. Also the "Pencil Box" controls will have to be moved more to the right and the chassis has 5 controls and a slide switch. My cabinet has 3 controls (plus a spare hole) and a slide switch. One of the front panel controls will have to be "hidden" somehow. I'm sure I can work it out.

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A big undertaking for sure.

BTW, it doesn't hurt asking if anybody might have one of these TV's complete and would be willing to sell or even just the right chassis number either a TE-319 or a TE-330?

Congrats and good luck.

Maybe you can replace one of the single pots with a concentric shaft dual pot to get the number of shafts poking into the pencil box down, but keep all the controls accessible.

Thanks. A good suggestion. I'll keep it in mind.

The Arvin set shown in entry number 23 from your earlier thread is a newer model using a 90 degree CRT. It also used a heater transformer and a voltage doubler. They also built that set for Sears.
The set shown in this thread is really impressive. Arvin engineer's must've thought, "We can build a set that is as good or better than the big guys."
They also built that model for Sears. It must've been their TOTL model that year. Those used either a 21AP4 or a glass 21ZP4.

Thanks for that info.

Took the chassis to the car wash this evening. Now It's ready to be worked on.

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One of the first things I'd thought I'd do was to see how much of the HV cage needs to be trimmed back away from the CRT. I made a HV cage from some cardboard. I then marked where it should go on the chassis and the mounted the chassis. I notched the corner to match the curvature of the CRT.

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I then decided to give me about 1 inch clearance and cut the cardboard. It took me several tries to get the clearance I wanted.

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I then transferred the cutout to the HV cage. The notch should work out well.

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A good thing was that the chassis mounting holes matched the cabinet! I bolted the chassis in place when doing the HV cage notch it gave me the chance to see how well the controls would fit the front of the cabinet. The pencil box controls lined up very nice to the pencil box and the 2 main controls were just a hair high. I put on the Contrast and Volume knobs and they looked good and you couldn't even see they were slightly high.

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So the only problem would be one extra control shaft in the pencil box.
I wonder how they made the "notch", penknife? Maybe the rodents did it.

Yeah, one extra control.

I was thinking they they used a dull spoon!

Looks like you are making good progress. Your cage mod will probably look worlds better than that nibble from the Iron Giant currently there.:D

I removed the Flyback, Yoke wiring, CRT wiring, and 2 terminal strips off the top side of the chassis so I could clean it better.

I did move the pencil box controls 1 hole over to the right and the "Tone" and "TV/Phono" switch was pushed behind the front panel. I just might make a bracket to mount it to and drill a hole in the bottom of the cabinet to access these controls. We'll see. That will happen a lot further down the road.

In the meantime I'm using a wire wheel/drill and Naval Jelly to get rid of all the rust spots.

https://tvrestorerguy.com/wp-content.../100_2636a.jpg

I cleaned up the rust the best I could. In a lot of places the chassis is pretty pitted. I'll probably paint the chassis like I usually do. But this time between the primer and color, I'll fill the pits. Stay tuned.

I also removed the tuner. This TV once had a UHF tuner but it is missing. I wasn't going to use one anyway. The VHF tuner has been removed at one time. More on that later.

Tomorrow I'll start cleaning up the chassis. I already masked off the tube sockets.

https://tvrestorerguy.com/wp-content.../100_2655a.jpg

How good is the CRT?

Both tested excellent.