This weekend, I began on what's sure to be a long resto on the CTC-4B chassis I hauled home from Indy. Why long? This set was apparently in operation in the same household from the time it was purchased until at least 1976, as evidenced by the repair tags left by RCA techs over the years. There are some ugly looking hack repairs, which will need undoing if it's ever gonna work again. CRT it had was a factory rebuilt 21AXP22, date code says 6543- which seems kinda odd. I would have thought they would've replaced it with a 21CYP22, but apparently the factory rebuilt metal tubes for a long time after they were 'out of service'.
First thing I did to the chassis was wipe most of the dust off, and test the tubes it had. All of them are good, so I won't have to worry about them. First thing I noticed was the power input jack was destroyed, so it will need to be replaced. Looked like the cord had melted to it, but the power trans ohms out fine (crossed fingers for the PTX). Next, I turned my attention to the HV cage. Looked good at first, but a second look revealed a burn under the horiz centering pot and a blown capacitor. Some past tech had wired the (replacement?) caps in totally wrong, which lead to the pot smoking. It will need to be replaced with a new one. Other than that, the horiz output transformer looks brand new so I hope the pot is the only trouble I have with the HV section.
Next, I pulled a few of the can caps and started restuffing them. They will have all new caps installed inside the old cans, then I'll reinstall the cardboard covers so it looks factory. After the rest of the power supply caps are replaced, I'm going to go ahead with a cursory run of the chassis to see what's alive at this point. I'll bring it up slow with the variac, and if nothing blows I'll probably recap the horizontal section so I can tell if HV is good to go.
More after next weekend!
