Nice haul! They all look interesting.

Hey, Zeno that is interesting about the 'auto color' bypassing. My '86 model with the 9-470 ought to have this done too, I'm guessing? I'm being lazy, since I have already taken it apart twice, while fixing the color purity issue. I have no complaints about its color fidelity, but there is no auto color switch, just an afc switch.
In storage, I have quite a few 80s Zeniths with some using the 9-181, so I'll have to look into the mod on those. Some have a 'chromatic' switch, which is basically an auto color ckt.

I dont think the 9-470 had the problem. As I remember it was on
first year "custom" series sets. I think they updated the IC but I
dont remember a part # change. IIRC it was a Hitachi IC & there
sets looked orangy too. If you do a 9-470 I would be careful &
refer to schematics first.
Sets with the switch looked fine with it off. Thats what told me
something was up. Same board, IC & CRT but the pix on the
cheap ones looked like dog doot.
For purity issues on these usually you need a small correction
magnet on the bell. Someone else here a few weeks ago did
his & used a piece of refrigerator door gasket magnet.
Very clever.........And came out perfect !

73 Zeno:smoke:

That was me! On the 1986 zenith in question. I have been impressed with the pix quality of it; I view some Dvd content on it nightly. I swap a variety of sets in and out as my 'daily watcher', and use one of those Blonder Tongue agile modulators as a whole house xmitter. The rest of my TV collection is set up in a spare room, and in storage. By the way, this set has Hitachi ICs all over the 9-470 main module, dual inline pin, LSI to VLSI chips.These are small mainboards with a plastic case horiz out..not a TO-3 case. Probably among the last sets made in USA.

Mine was made in Springfield, MO; but, I'm sure the boards were assembled in Mexico.

If memory serves me right, yes, the 9-160 could flame out. Usually it was under the two small transformers in front of the the AC line choke. The soldering was dismal and bad connections on the stakes soldered to the PC underneath would crystalize and overheat. There was a piece of cardboard directly underneath that would have holes burned in it a lot of times. I usually saw the 9-160 flybacks just violently arc and blow the horizontal output.

I remember one 9-160 console set that someone gave me and it had many parts, including the HOT, blown on the module. After replacing those parts, I turned the set on and got the 4th of July flyback. I turned it off before anything else burned up, salvaged a flyback from a junk board, and the set worked fine. I'm not sure that Zenith ever offered the flyback as a replacement item. When the flyback failed, they really wanted you to swap the module.