During my rounds at the various junk stores today one of my finds was a nice little Variac, it's rated a 5 amps which is plenty for most TV work, $18 and it was mine, needs a cord but is in great condition.
I was looking for something to try it out on and this Admiral was handy.
As I said above, this set had been infested with Mice, I took it to work and applied Phosphoric Acid on it to remove the rust, then I scrubbed it off with some Purple Cleaner, this was in addition to the undiluted Clorox bath I gave it at home.
Next I took it out to the wash rack and hit it with the Steam Cleaner with more Purple stuff added.
Later that day, still not satisfied with the cleanliness of the chassis I put it in the Aqueous Parts Washer and scrubbed it some more, then I rinsed it in hot water. Nothing was spared in this process since nothing had been spared the Mouse Pee/Poo, Flyback, Transformer controls all got cleaned and rinsed.
I took it home and baked it in the oven at 170 (lowest it went) for about a half hour to dry it out, now the chassis has been sitting for the last week in the house so I felt it was safe to try powering it up.
I rigged up a power cord so I could monitor the Amperage as I applied the voltage to it, first with just the 5U4, it was OK so I added the sweep tubes.
At 90 volts the set was only drawing 1.0 Amps and I could hear an oscillator running and started hearing the tick of arcing HV so I put in the 5AXP4 CRT and it had a line across the screen.
I eventually put all the tubes in it and it's only pulling 1.6 amps at 120 volts, no smoke or smells and the filter cap is cool as a cucumber after messing with it for a half hour or so.
It's just flat unbelievable how much abuse one of these old chassis can take and still work to some degree.
Sorry for all the wordiness, I'll shut up now and post some pictures.
