Just what I always wanted, an '85 Zenith console
 

Not a roundie, not a 4 tube hybrid, not a CCII, not even an early system 3, but a stinking lower end Zenith 25" console from '85. It actually belonged to someone who knows my neighbor who watched it from '85 until 2008 without a single service call. I'd say he was lucky, since this set uses the dreaded 9-181 main module and 9-186 sweep module. If there are any '80's/'90's TV repairmen reading this; you know exactly the chassis I'm talking about.

The owner claimed that the set got to the point where it took a long time to fire up. Maybe 2 minutes, maybe 2 hours, then it finally died completely. When I turned it on, it came up instantly with a lousy picture and lines at the top of the screen. I replaced a 100 uf cap in the vertical circuit and rejuvenated the CRT. I also resoldered the two big stand up power resistors on the 9-181 module. It now has a decent picture; but, who knows for how long? IMHO, the best picture Zenith's were the chromacolors, the early system 3's (9-160 and 9-153 based sets), and the very early 9-181/186 sets with the tri-focus tube.

Let me know if you want to see a picture of this TV. It's nothing special. Just a remote set with a green LED channel display and a lot of empty space inside it's particleboard and plastic cabinet.

Oh, I saved the best for last. The guy got 23 years out of this set without trouble. The 40something inch Magnavox LCD that he paid over a grand for only lasted 10 months before it started showing it's true colors. He still had to pay labor charges to get it fixed as the labor portion of the warranty expired after 90 days. Isn't that some crap? He told me that he bought a Magnavox because it was such an old company and he thought he'd get good service out of the set. I explained to him that names didn't mean anything anymore and the original Magnavox company has not been around in decades.

post a pic of the tv. My grandparent's who live in preston which is only 40 miles from where you are in meridian have an old zenith system 3 tv. Its starting to go bad because the people on the tv have heads that are larger than their bodies.

OK, I'll take care of that tomorrow. Sounds like their set has bad caps in the vertical circuit. It's worth repairing if the picture is otherwise still good and especially if it's a pre '83 model.

I would like to see pictures of the TV! Man. I can just picture 20 or 30 years from now if TV broadcast still exists, TV's will be wafer thin and guaranteed to only last a couple of months before you have to go buy a new one.

I think my granddad got the Tv in like 1982 or 1985 or something, I don't know when. I'll ask my mom since she is down in mississippi taking care of my grandparents stuff because they both passed away.

OK, here they are!

http://i538.photobucket.com/albums/f...nith850001.jpg

http://i538.photobucket.com/albums/f...nith850002.jpg

http://i538.photobucket.com/albums/f...nith850003.jpg

All that extra cabinet room for such a small singleboard chassis! Gotta love the 9-181 :D Could add a push-pull stereo tube amp and a digital tuner in there, and still have room left over! Of course, why would that be worth the trouble.

The cabinet is in great shape at least and the picture looks good! Nice job getting it fixed up.

In agree that the 9-160 set I have absolutely kills the 9-181 I used to use. And the 9-181 set kills every CRT standard def. set I;ve seen, 1998-2009 :D

That tv looks pretty nice considering its age.

good picture.

Wow! I really like that cab and wow that TV is gutless! Should be pretty easy to work on with all that space.

And the last Zenith consoles from a few years ago had even less of a chassis.

I have a chassis, tuner, and CRT from one of these in the shed. The cabinet had been out in the rain and elements for 6 years, and was falling to pieces.

Looks like my 1982 Zenith, I use the 9-181/186 IIRC as well. Been in use since early 1983.

Well, there shouldn't be any issues of things getting too hot, with all that empty airspace in that cabinet. RCA back then also had small circuit boards like that inside big console cabinets.

And they could have had functional drawers in that cabinet, Lord knows there was room enough.

Lot of space for sure. I don't think that the 9-181's were necessarily bad chassis designs, but a lot of times the sets have had so much use, and the CRT's just tend to last a heck of a long time. Almost as if the tubes outlast the chassis in some of the Chromacolor and early System 3 sets. Definitely not the case with most early color sets!

Well, as luck would have it, I picked up a similar set last night at the curb. Yeah, what the hell, I felt sorry for it..I admit it. It was in such mint shape that I couldn't resist.

Of course, some scrapper cut the damn cord off :mad: but that was easy enough. Here's a lousy cell phone pic :)

http://i44.photobucket.com/albums/f9...1012120800.jpg

It's a Zenith model Z2510PN3, date of manufacture was December 1983. Strange set, for a few reasons. First, I thought all '84 Zenith models switched over to green LEDs, I remembered '83 being the last year for the red display. Second, it's not "cable ready", and of course is not a remote set.

It's got those identical guts, and the vertical linearity is somewhat off, and the picture is a little too wide on the sides. I couldn't find any adjustment at all for either. Picture, however, is beautiful.....

Wow! What a crazy looking little tiny chassis inside a BIG box.

Almost like a portable...with a huge CRT. I guess it would be easy to work on though, and not run hot with all that space.

I've had a few of those non-cable ready sets with the manual volume/power knob and there were also 13" and 19" versions of it. They even made 12" and 19" B&W's with that same style tuner. I ended up giving my set to the neighbor who helped me pick it up. Within 3 weeks of me giving it to him, his health took a severe nosedive and he had to be placed in a nursing home. After it was determined that he'd never live at home again, his legal guardian cleaned out the house and this TV fell back into my lap. After that, I gave it to someone else, never to be seen again.

Weird thing is that it only draws 94 watts of power. Not used to seeing that on the back of a television ;)

had many of these in the 80s.not bad sets at all.nice crts and pretty cheap to repair.united tuner sold the chassis' for 59.00 back then.the replacements worked very well and never had one come back.didnt see too many bad crts either.

Looks like my SY2585P, mine was made in December of 1982, has Space Command remote control and green LED display channel display.

Was watching it the other day, and occasionally the color would develop something like a color sepia tone very briefly. Have to check to see if it's just a dirty control or something worse.....

I thought on Zeniths with LED displays, Green meant that they where cable ready and RED meant not cable ready. I remember a 90's non remote 13" color set we had with the Red LED's and not being cable ready.

The only reason that I remember the red/green display thing is that my parents bought a new 19" Zenith color set in late '83, and the salesman said that the only big change for the '84 models was the green display versus red. But you know how salesmen lie :D , so who knows....

Incidentally, after additional viewing, the issue seems to be that the blue gun is intermittently overdriven somehow. It's not a control issue, as the controls don't affect it. Going to have to pop the back off.....

Try resoldering the resistor pack next to the three G2 controls on the main board. Otherwise, you may have an intermittently shorting CRT.

Wiggling the controls, and trying to move them around physically had absolutely no effect on the picture, which surprised me. Even if it wasn't the controls themselves, I imagine it would have flexed the board to some degree to make or break the connection.

I think I'll just let the sucker play overnight first, and get up in the morning and see what it's doing. Since the problem's intermittent, I might not be able to easily spot it until it's failed completely.

It's interesting that, by the '80s, these TVs used such a small chassis in huge console cabinets. I wonder why Zenith did this in the first place; after all, it seems like an awful waste of cabinet space. Putting that tiny chassis in a portable or table model would have made more sense. Was Zenith trying to make some kind of statement, or were they just seeing if they could make a console TV with as few parts as they thought they could get away with? That this TV did not have adjustments for raster size (the optimum values may have been set by fixed resistors) should have been a dead giveaway that corners had been cut in the design of the set -- well out of character for Zenith, which for decades -- generations, even -- was known for quality in radio as well as television and high fidelity.

I don't know when Zenith stopped using their slogan "the quality goes in before the name goes on", but I certainly think they wouldn't have had any business using it after the company left the US for Korea. My own variation on that slogan is "the quality fell off the boat on the way to Korea", which, IMHO, makes more sense these days.

BTW, just because these sets had postage stamp size chassis, don't think they were as light as feathers -- I'm sure they weren't. The CRT probably weighs 30 or more pounds, and the cabinet, though made of particle board, probably weighs at least as much as the tube, if not more. I have a utility cart here (made into an entertainment center cabinet) on which my flat-screen TV, VCR and DVD sit, and I'll bet the cart was made of particle board and could weigh 20-30 pounds or more, if it weighs an ounce. Just goes to prove my point -- that even today's furniture made of particle board or pressed sawdust (!) isn't light by any stretch of the imagination. Just don't try to lift a TV in a cabinet like that yourself, unless you want a hernia or worse.

Medium Density Fiber (MDF) is by NO means light anyway. The switch to this was purely a cost saving measure...since there really is no "grade" or attention paid to appearance. Put veneer on it, formica, or contact paper with PICTURES of wood...and be done with it. Most of my flat is stuff I got from IKEA or wherever.....That stuff is SUPER heavy, and almost ALL of it MDF.

I would imagine there has to be SOME actual real wood in these cabinets. MDF doesn't stand stress in any ONE location for very long without sagging. I would think they can't mount something like the CRT in an MDF panel. I used to build speaker boxes for high-end car stereo stuff (in the '80's)...and had to be careful of speaker mounting points for this reason if you mounted BIG speakers (I mean REALLY BIG)...and/or amps to the box itself.

My guess on the very small chassis was to save on an actual big metal chassis...and possibly to make this chassis VERY versatile as to where and what could be built around it. Since I have NEVER owned a big console like this....I have never really had the chance to work on any since the early '80s in school. I always dream of being in a place so big I could have one of those big LONG Curtis Mathis or Maggie consoles with the turntable and BIG 'ol paper speaker cones on each side, and the space AROUND me to not bug the neighbors if I wanna ENJOY that console :-)

There is zero real wood on this set. The front of the cabinet, where the faux drawers are, is PLASTIC.

Sucker sure is heavy though. I carried it down into my basement myself. Wanna know how? :)

It was easy. I removed the wheels, put the set on its side, then took a piece of plywood, and using 6 drywall screws, affixed it to the bottom of the set. Then tipped it back up, and slid it across my living room carpet, and down my basement steps, without a scratch, and no straining of my back.

When you don't have a helper, you need to be inventive :D

A better pic of the set....

http://i44.photobucket.com/albums/f9...1012120939.jpg

I had a Sylvania like this with a 4 x 6" speaker. Sets like this tended to have 4" or at the most 4 x 6" speakers. For $3 more the mfr. could have put in a 6 x 9" for good sound.

Starting in the late '70's-early '80's, most manufacturers started switching to the smaller PC-board chassis designs that relied heavily on integrated circuits. By this time, they were using the same basic chassis in 13" sets all the way up to the big 25" consoles. I have an '84 13" Zenith that has the same guts as this big console.

I hope you get many years of use out of this TV, even though it was made in the mid-'80s. Does it still have the original CRT? If it's the original and the tube is getting weak, that could explain the color shift you describe.

I had two Zenith portables in the '80s, both 13" (L1310C with knob tuning, bought new in 1979; three years later, I bought another Zenith 13" with one-knob electronic tuning) and was pleased with both sets. Both lasted well over a decade (the first portable did last 20 years; the second, about 17 or so), and in fact were still working very well when I left them at my former residence in 1999 (moved to an apartment, no room for these sets). Both Zeniths were in plastic cabinets, the older one in a jet-black and faux-chrome cabinet, the newer one in a plastic cabinet with faux wood grain. However, I never had five minutes' worth of trouble with either set; they both had excellent pictures on OTA antenna signals and on cable, the latter with a Jerrold 13-button cable box that gave me something like 37 channels. Don't know what happened to either set after I moved, as I wasn't even present when the house was being cleaned out in preparation for sale (long story and OT), although my best guess is both sets were trashed.

I didn't think about your method of moving your set when I made my last post; however, it is one very good way to move heavy furniture (not necessarily TVs) without damaging it, if you must move it without assistance. I didn't realize, either, that your set has hidden casters under the cabinet. The converted utility cart that houses my video system also has hidden casters, which makes it look a lot nicer in my apartment. I had a larger cabinet, but had to get rid of it when I came here because the TV I had at the time (RCA CTC185 19" table model) wouldn't fit in the cabinet's TV area -- but my VCR fit the top shelf just perfectly....go figure. That particular cabinet had casters in plain view at the base, which I didn't care for once I got here, although I used that cabinet for some years at the other house with two or three different TVs and several VCRs. The last TV to occupy that cabinet was a Zenith Sentry 2 19" table model (1995 vintage), which I still have and which still works great, the last time I tried it. Still has the original CRT, which always amazes me since this set was made within the time frame during which Zenith TVs generally had junk CRTs that would short and take much of the video chain with them after only two years or so. Of course, I didn't use my set that much, only for four years (1995-1999); maybe that has something to do with why the set still works as well as it does today. I wonder how many Sentry 2s are still in use these days, with cable boxes, of course. :scratch2:

Plastic or not, it looks darn good; could have fooled anyone into believing it was actual wood. Sure had me fooled -- until I read your post, I thought the entire cabinet was real wood or, at worst, particle board with walnut or maple veneer over it. I wonder how many people bought these sets and had them for years, never realizing or even suspecting the cabinet was essentially all plastic.

Probably quite a bit, I wouldn't have realized it, it was only that I had it tipped over that I got to see the backside of it.

Update: after 7 straight hours of runtime, the screen went with what I'll describe as an overdriven blue, making the set look, as I mentioned, sepia toned, with very slightly brighter blue bars near (but not at) the top and bottom. Turned the set off, turned it right back on, and the blueness was gone.

(sigh)

I'm not sure, but I believe so. There's a service sticker on the back of it that shows it was serviced in 1990, but it doesn't say what was done.....

Well, after watching the Presidential debate last night on my '83 Zenith, the really bad color fluctuations in the picture that have been happening since I "adopted" it seem to now finally be gone. All of the hot air must have melted and reformed all of the solder on the circuit board traces and straightened out the blue gun in the picture tube.

Think I'll get a DVD copy of one of these for future television repair :lmao:

I think a lot of people still preferred the consoles so that's why you'd end up with a tiny chassis in a bog wooden case. Even today, my mother is still bummed they don't make console TV's anymore and I admit I'm kind of that way myself. IIRC, I think Zenith made consoles as late as 2002 or a little after, I remember seeing one that resemble my 1982 model. I have nothing against flatscreens, they are good for saving space, but nothing beats a console as a main set.