So last night I sit down to watch some TV on my Zenith around 9PM, thinking how great it is that I finally found a color TV that doesn't need too much in the way of regular repairs. (The last I did was to replace the tripler 4 years ago). And then it just shuts off on it's own, no sound, no picture, no nothing.
First I tried the obvious, power cord not plugged in all the way, circuit breaker... It was none of that. Then I looked at the power supply, diodes, filter caps... It was none of that. But something was shorting the B+ to ground. I finally found the problem around 3AM, after having pulled all the modules out, and disconnected quite a bit of stuff trying to isolate it.
So get this, it was one of those notorious 22-5001 caps. But not like you think. Instead of one of those white ones going open, an orange drop one shorted
I replaced them all with the orange drop ones back when I replaced the tripler. I had one extra, so I put in in, and put everything back together.
By this time, it's 4AM, I turn it on... NO COLOR
Now if I turn the color killer way down, and the color control way up, and hook it to the color bar generator with the output cranked all the way up, I can get that pattern where the 3 colors are in horizontal lines rolling up and down the screen. On an older color set, this usually means I can adjust the color oscillator frequency and get it to work. But I don't see any such adjustment on this. I'm much more at home working on tube b&w, solid state color I'm not so sure what I'm looking at. I already tried the simple stuff like making sure the modules were plugged in all the way, nothing under the chassis was shorted... I'm not so sure if this was something I caused by removing all those modules and putting them back, or something else went when that capacitor shorted...