[jshorva65]

Here's the latest on the Zenith 25LC30 "Roundie" scored on the recent NY road trip. Cabinet finish is being restored as I write this. After cleaning up an absolutely filthy 3AT2 socket cup, some other cleanup work inside the HV cage, re-forming its electrolytics, and temporarily opening the 6HF5 cathode circuit for later fuse installation, the chassis was connected to the CK3000 Test Rig and put through a soft-start which it passed quite nicely. After the soft-start, the 300mA fuse was inserted into the 6HF5 cathode circuit. The chassis produced a recognizable picture almost immediately upon warmup, after just a few minor tweaks of the front-panel operating controls. Monitoring the 6HF5 cathode, the current reading was a very safe 202mA, within 1% of the 200mA specified by the Sams data. Sams specified an obviously-incorrect 26.5-27.5kV anode voltage range. The measured HV was within 1kV of the 23.5-24.5kV range typically specified for sets employing a 21FBP22 CRT, so the HV needed little adjustment to bring it within specifications. I've got some 0.015uF/1kV and 0.15uF/1kV capacitors on order to replace some "white time bomb" caps which seem to be OK for testing until the replacements arrive. There are fewer than a dozen capacitors on this chassis which will be replaced as preventive maintenance. The vast majority of capacitors in this chassis are of typically reliable epoxy-dipped construction (epoxy-dipped ceramic discs and Orange Drop equivalents). Here are the photos from the testing I've done so far. It appears that dripping wax from the FBT and HV arcing were used as an excuse for this set's having been taken out of service, probably condemned for a presumed "bad flyback" as a sales opportunity for a new "solid state" set of perhaps the Chromacolor II era. Some wax had dripped out of the FBT, but it was a very small quantity and it was very easy to pour some new wax into the small void which the dripping wax had formed. After a few hours of continuous bench testing, all electrolytics and the FBT have remained cool. Line current draw is 2.75A at 120V. Considering the crummy dynamic convergence capabilities typical of test rigs, the picture quality looks quite good.