My experience is the set goes through a 2nd infant mortality. Whats going to fail usually does withing a few weeks. Once you get past that it should be fairly reliable. You can recap it and that will help but then something random like a detector diode or pot will fail.
Im not big on fans, they bring in tons of dust and the HV already attracts enough on its own.
Dave is right on with lowering the voltage. That really helps with the heat.

Also I wouldnt recommend aligning anything that required turning slugs until I ran the set for a few weeks with the new caps.

One caution - some sets may not like the B+ TOO low, because it may reduce the drive to the horizontal output. Best bet is to monitor the B+ and set it for nominal or only slightly low, I would guess.

Great tip on holding of on the alignment. One possibility to reduce or eliminate dust when using a fan is to take a page out of diesel locomotives...they filter the air that's used to cool the engine compartment. This does two things, not only is the air that's brought into the compressor filtered, it also pressurizes the loco so that ambient dust etc can't migrate in.

Needn't be anything too complicated, even a cheese cloth may suffice. One thing to watch out for would be if the fan failed for any reason the available convection cooling may not be enough.

A big problem I have seen with RCA's and RCA-clone type sets is that wiring gets burned from power resistors under the chassis. After replacing burned wiring in a CTC-28, I relocated a power resistor which was on a burned terminal strip near cooked wiring out in front of the chassis so it is underneath the picture tube. There is a lot more open air for cooling there and it is not near any wiring.

I also found the high line voltage tap on the power transformer and wired it up in the power supply along with adding a 115VAC coil relay to switch the power. I came across a whole bunch of 115VAC relays and sockets and this takes the heavy current load off the power switch.

Power Surge
 

Great idea Chad on the relay, I'm surprised you guys don't leave the sets on at a predetermined volume and use a power strip for on /off.............:yes:

That's what I do and the fans plugged into it to.:thmbsp:

Why is it not possible to just add a resistor to the live side of the line cord to reduce the incoming line voltage?

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As far as the power switch goes...you just need to the set on at the lines zero crossing point.

Timing is everything !!!
 

PZT !!!:banana:

How about running the sets on a timer with the volume down? Haven't looked, but I bet there's a programmable timer somewhere that'll permit once a week or even once a month activation. I think one of my exes had one of those LOL