Found a Zenith
 

Today's front page of the university newspaper depicted a fellow strumming a banjo on the front porch of his lodgings. My eyes immediately went to the Zenith color TV sitting on the front lawn.

The house was just up the street from where I work. I knocked on the door. A girl answered and a guy upstairs said "does someone want the set? Tell 'em it doesn't work!" The girl said she was sick of it and just take it.

It is a 24MC32 and here is the newspaper clipping and my cell phone pictures of the set after I retrieved it. All the tubes are in place, the cabinet is faded but sound apart fro a broken leg and the only other thing I see broken is a minor convergence coil plastic breakage on the convergence panel. The front panel and a couple of knobs are missing. It appears otherwise quite clean inside and restorable.

I shall shortly test the CRT.

Terry

Miracle it wasn't necked.

Cool acquisition story, congrats on the new set. Hope you can get it working in short order.

Matt

sweet critter! Those can give a great picture!
And it has the complimentary melted focus wand.
Change the bumblebees, check the electrolytics and get the variac!

Good save! We should all be as on-it as you when these opportunities arise.

Were they playin' "Dueling Banjos ?" Gawd, that movie STILL gives me The Creeps, 40 years on...It was filmed right below Chattanooga, where I went to boarding school, & the locals were NOT Best Pleased w/their depiction, either...

Kinda like us around here when Fargo came out, ya know.

I do not know how long the set was on the lawn. It must have gone thru a rain storm or two. It is testimony to Zenith chassis plating as there is virtually no rust. And the cabinet survived without delaminating.

I have seen a number of sets like which always seem to get necked. This set is a real survivor.

I removed the chassis to clean and examine. And the tube was tested as depicted. The tube took about half an hour to wake up and the three guns are giving good emission.

Was living in Fargo around that time - loved the people telling me that they didn't sound like that at all. :D

A great way to find a roundie! You really do have to have your eyes open all the time...looks like a colorful character, sitting next to that colorful TV. No surprise that this set survived, 60s Zeniths almost always do, somehow.

I think I have that same Zenith. Mine has a dead crt and toasted pwr tranny. If nothing else, you at least have a good CRT.

Last weekend I spliced in the part of the missing leg with a piece of poplar. I do not know the original wood but the poplar should stain to match.

I am a sucker for these down and out sets. But this roundie deserved to be saved. The chassis fortunately survived in good state.

Excellent work! I agree, sets this downtrodden absolutely deserve to return to the land of the living. A true diamond in the rough!

Looks a lot like one of the Zenith sets I acquired in January. Good score! I like the danish modern cabinet.

I have been doing a bit of work on this set, as time permits, over the last month or so. I stripped the cabinet, restained it in Chesnut Brown and relaquered it with three coats of aerosol laquer.

It was a smoker set so there was tons of gunk to clean off from the interior. I removed the HV cage, removed the HO Transformer and cleaned it fully out. It is now pretty spotless.

I replaced a few cracked coils, the power connector and the curcuit breaker. I fashioned a couple of knobs to replace those missing. Still need the control door.

Fired it up on the weekend and did some trouble shooting. All appears to be in order EXCEPT for the HO Transformer. It appears to breakdown in operation so there is no HV. I called Moyers and await their reply.

can you describe the failure mode of the fly a bit more?

The fly is the last thing I would suspect in a zenith. Make sure you pull the cap off the hv reg tube first and verify its not over regulation or somthing like that. Looking at the schematic I see it has that complex shunt regulator with a bunch of high value resistors. Should be a fly282 and I bet he has it.

Thanks for the response. Certainly, I shall share my current woe.

Fired up the set and checked basic voltages which appeared okay. I noticed the HO Tube began to red plate after a few minutes and there was no HV. Checked the H Oscillator and it was spot on frequency and amplitude to the HO Tube was correct and the HO Tube bias was about -60volts.

I loosely coupled the scope to the HO Tube plate and saw a good spike. Removing the HV rectifier cap, I could draw only a small arc. I tried disconnecting the various things that might load the transformer such as the convergence assembly, the yoke horizontal coil and the HV would not rise.

I measured the DC voltages on the plate and cathode of the damper and they were the same and there is no boost B plus. Incidently, I removed the regulator cap to ensure it wasn't loading down the HV.

I finally did some resistance measurements and see there is about a 500k ohm resistance from the HV windings to ground. There should be no leakage from this winding to ground unless there has been a breakdown through the transformer frame itself.

Funny as I tried ringing the coil earlier and it seemed okay. It looks like it will breakdown when powered up.

All thoughts are welcome but it looks like the HO Transformer to me.

Its always easy to measure the screen, if its high the tube is overloaded, if its low its lack of drive.

I would agree the ring test can be pointless unless the primary is shorted. I took apart several rca ones to repair and rewax them, they all had the same failure, the hv winding was arcing from the top of the doughnut to the bottom with a big carbon trace from one end to the other.

Zeniths seem to fail less because they are potted in that hard epoxy.

From what you are saying I would try changing it.

That's quite an impressive repair to that leg-
Great job!

Magnavox300

WOW, what a nice job and woodworking for the replaced spliced leg!!

oh good luck on this one .. she is a true survivor and I am sure she will payback all the loving care... and I am sure you will sort that HO.

I unfortunately struck out with Moyers. They were very helpful and did provide me the list of part numbers for replacements: Thordarson FLY-282, Stancor HO-629c and Triad d329. Does anyone know of an alternative source of supply?

On the other hand, I am not averse to ripping the transformer apart to examine what the trouble is. Has anyone ant experience removing the expoxy covering on these things?

The search continues ...

Thanks for the complement on the leg. My furniture repair knowledge was honed by a British book I bought thirty years ago written by Charles Haywood. He was an old time restorer and and the splice technique came almost verbatim from his book.

That cabinet is looking might fine!! :yes:

Wonder if there are still any good hillbilly areas? Ozarks have changed ,
Kentucky now dotted with WalMarts but still some old farms.

Hope you can find a flyback. It is rare for a Zenith to have one go out, but....when I was a kid, my Uncle got a Zenith in on trade. Can't remember what chassis number, but it was the first Zenith rectangular set, so it was a 65 or 66 model. At the time the set was 14 years old. Altho the set came from a spotless home, and saw little use, (the chassis didn't have a speck of dust on it) the flyback was bad. He was going to junk it out, but the cabinet was so beautiful, and with it being a mint space command set, I took it. I had him put in a flyback, and discovered that the picture tube was bad. I had him put in a Zenith Chromacolor tube, and my parents got years of use out of it, before it finally died. Anyway... altho rare (my Uncle was even surprised the flyback was bad) it does happen, and I hope you can find a replacement for yours.

Only saw two Zenith Flybacks fail, one in a smokers-tar encrusted 1969 23" chassis 16Z8C50 and my Aunt's bedroom set (no doubt left on all night) a 1970 14A9C29?.

Try Madison County in Western North Carolina. Plenty to choose from...

It's also an incredibly beautiful area out there. I'd be living there if I could find a place I could afford.

That Zenith will be a good performer. I wish you all the best luck with it.:yes:

Not that I have one, but is the OEM part number S-71144 or S-65465? They both interchange to the replacement flys.
I bring this up because maybe someone has a pull that's sitting in a junkbox somewhere....

Check Talon Electronics too...http://www.talonix.com/shop/

Some of the Zeniths, I had problems with, where the terminal board would soak up moisture and affect the focusing on high humidity days. The transformer had to be replaced, as silicone or corona dope wouldn't help. :thumbsdn:

Getting back to the Banjo picker for a moment,
He seems like a true Country Boy, not like one who
went to school in the Big City (Knoxville).

i just rescued the same model zenith.has a replacement crt that is excellent,works with a nasty tuner and a sync issue.vertical is all there but shakes and wont lock in.came from a used car dealers office here in columbus.he used it 15 years until the digital conversion.was going to the recycler if someone didnt take it.cabinet needs some help but the set is all there and again,the crt is excellent.

The guy who was the banjo picker is a guy named Billy Reddin. He got well off the money he earned in "Deliverence", & found a whole bunch of new friends who helped him spend it. He'd worked at a service station, & about a year later, he was back at the service station. He's been in a few movies other than Deliverence. I DON'T think he ever attended UT, he was more Georgia Tech material...Prolly woulda been Summa Cum Laude there...

well now that is ashame about that flyback because on ebay about a month ago there was a lot of 10 flybacks that went for i think 30.00 and there was a fly629c that said for zeniths and i was going to bid on it but didnt and here he would have had the right fly for the set because i would not have used that one. ok sorry it was not the ho-629c but rather a thordarson fly 629c but it did say zenith and thordarson and stancor are different and the numbers, this is why i revised this, sorry.

upon further inspection of this zenith,a crt label in red and white,looking like rca but says zenith.another sticker reads hi-lite.this is a low level set with a plain cabinet.looks like a rebadged rca crt.it is excellent and between the jumps and shakes,the picture is sharp and the color saturation is beautiful.i will pull the chassis and look at caps.cabinet might have to be completely overhauled.then again,flyback is good and crt is excellent.that can get 2 more roundies back in service for someone else

*lol*

I was told that the metal cabinet versions of these sets are rare. Supposedly the metal cabinet sets were not saved for the furniture factor that saved a lot of sets long after their useful service. I got one and thought that it was junky because it had the metal cabinet, but frankly it's one less worry as far as refinishing and supposedly more valuable.

thats amazing that chassie looks in better shape laying outside ,than my chassie did sitting inside a barn ,i had wire brush dirt and rust and who knows what off mine.

The set had sat outside two weeks I was told. In that time there was one minor rain shower. Testimony to the good plating used on the chassis was that it escaped relatively unscathed.

I am still looking for the flyback transformer. No luck with Talon or Moyers...

What a terrific story and what a nice job you did with this set!! You get first prize for this restoration and to think how close it came to meeting up with a dempster!