RCA KCS171E.....REALLY thin power to chassis wire....???
 

Okay.....on the KCS171E RCA set that I felt sorry for and brought home and cleaned up, etc......

All of a sudden, no power to the set. On the left side of the two terminal power plug is a wire that's about as thin as a human hair, while the other side of the wire is standard size. The wire was broken, I soldered it, now it's falling apart. Before, the case was off for testing. Must have fallen apart during reassembly, this wire is SUPER brittle.

About the only thing that I can think of is that this set was built so cheaply that RCA figured they'd use this as some kind of fuse. If that's the case, I'll just use regular wire and solder one in. Or is there some other screwy reason for this super thin wire on one side of the power cord to chassis?

Photofact schematic lists it as a "4" length of #36 fuse wire", while the parts list has it as a "2" length #34 AWG wire".

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The RCA we had as a kid had the same thing, it was a 69 or 70 model.
One day the yoke shorted out and that wire popped.

Funny you should say that. Guess what's happening......

I wired in a 120V 1.75A fuse, figuring that it ought to get it close. Powered the set up, and my 13 year old son was watching Clifford on it (reliving some memories :) ) while it was sitting on the bench. All of a sudden, the raster collapsed into a horizontal line, and then lost raster. Hissing from the set. Flyback is fine, it's either the yoke or the vertical output transformer.

I hate to just consign this set to the deep, but I don't see this set as being worth sinking money into. Bah.

I should note that the fuse wire didn't blow.....it broke initially when I somehow broke it while changing the .22 uF line filter cap. I soldered it together, but it fell apart eventually.

I never had a "problem" that caused a fuse wire to break. In
fact never saw many that broke. I have no problem changing
over to a fuse but dont sue me if your house burns ! I am
sure it was done only to save money. In the shop we kept
rolls of wire & didnt change to fuses. Always careful about
keeping the sets safety features for shock & fire as CYA.


73 Zeno:smoke:

Assuming that one does not have a roll of fuse wire laying around, what would be an acceptable fuse replacement? Is there a place where you can even buy fuse wire?

All I did was touch it, and it snapped.....kind of a moot point at the moment though, as the set has other issues. Might just shelf it until I can find a parts set somewhere cheap, or maybe someone here's got one. I just can't bring myself to junk a set that made a darn good picture....even for a little while.