Restoring a Philco model E-3032
 

A couple summers ago the WARCI had a TV swap-meet and one of the sets I bought IIRC for $35 was this Philco. I really dig the styling of the cabinet. It is like 30's-40's scifi meets touches of the 50's. It is a local Milwaukee piece with the factory UHF tuner option. I was told it still worked by the seller and he was quite right! Aside from one whole period lytic can, a period replacement for a section of that same can (must have been a troublemaker), and some tubes this set is totally stock. Below are pictures of the cabinet, and it running on original parts.

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It is remarkably compact for a 17" set with the classic deep low sweep angle CRT (I have a mid-50's RCA I should photograph it sitting on for comparison), but that compactness is a double edged sword...Part of the reason I waited to work on this set (besides it already working) was that I could not figure out how to remove the chassis. The chassis is bigger than the tube access hatch on it's back, and the neck length prevents any illusion of trying to rotate the chassis into leaving that route. I decided to remove the CRT cover and try removing JUST the CRT, and THAT was not practical either...The CRT and chassis must be removed as a unit, and there are lots of things holding that unit. Eventually I got it out and commenced the recap. Most of the tubular caps were leaking below 50V, and the CRT was testing BELOW 10% on my tester :eek:.... I'm not not sure HOW it even gave me the decent picture and sound on original parts that it did. In recognition of it's tenacity I cranked the CRT heater voltage up and let it cook/wake up, and commenced the recap. The CRT came up to marginal on the tester which given how well it did on almost NO emission should yield a nice bright picture...I'm not even going to bother using a brightener on this CRT.
After the recap I had no sound (thanks to a bad test speaker) until I tried another speaker. While goofing with that the vertical collapsed and fixed it's self.

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This set is perhaps the least serviceable tube TV I've worked on...The chassis is harder to remove than the trio of GE 14T series I just finished, the set is mostly PCBs and all are bolted foil side to the chassis with no foil side access short of removing wires from the board and unbolting it....They use radial caps on the boards so you can't EVEN clip the caps out on the top of the board and J-hook new ones to the stubs like the GE 14T and RCA sets I've worked on! I can see why they designed them to never die like this one has...

Sharp looking '50's Philco TV that's not seen too often. Nice colors too. I wonder if it's as difficult to work on as the late '50's RCA Deluxe sets. I was always told they're the worst to work on, and built as not to be fixed! I know one long-time repairman that won't even bother with them.
Enjoy the set!

I like it.

I really like that slant design, sets it apart from all the boxy portables that were out there in the 50's. It seems philco had a habit of choosing design over ease of servicing, thanks for sharing though!

I've never had the misfortune of working on one of those lousy RCAs so I can't compare.

Thanks. It seemed that in the 30's-50's many Philco radios had swanky modern cabinets, but soon after they started selling TV's they decided to give their TVs plain cabinets...It seems they waited till this and the Predicta line to break with that styling....

I finished the recap, and selenium replacement...Save for the 100uF 450V section of the top can...Which tested good, and I don't have a replacement for. It works well, but I can tell from how much sharper, brighter, and more contrasty my 8" test CRT is that the original 17" jug in it is far from great....I may eventually add a brightener if I put this in regular service.
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One odd thing is that the Horiz AFC diodes are mounted on their own terminal strip despite having a perfectly good place to attach to the board....It's like a previous run had a bad batch of diodes and they expected these to fail too.
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To give an idea of the compactness here is a shot of it on a 17" RCA....The only thing I have with the same CRT that might be more compact is a Setchell Carlson portable.
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