Quote:
|
Originally Posted by sixt8mopar
From what I recall.....He said he had it on and the screen had a glow and some lines.I looked inside none of the caps look like they are leaking,they don't appear oil soaked.But I don't know....Just glad I saved it.
|
Yes - definitely! That's one nice little set! Good find!
Anyway, it'll almost definitely need a lot of new capacitors - the old ones of the type that you'll find in that set are made out of paper, tinfoil and wax. These capacitors are pretty unreliable to begin with, and now even more so that they're 50 years old. While they might not 'look' bad, they're probably electrically leaky, and probably need to be replaced.
Now, the main concern for plugging the set in is the electrolytic capacitors. Those can fail, short out, and cause a fire, burn out power transformers, etc. Most of the can style electrolytics of that era won't be 'wet' - i.e., they won't leak oil and gunk. IIRC, they stopped using the wet electrolytics for the most part after the war. Could be wrong though - just never seen one in a television.
Of course, you probably knew a lot of this, but I need _something_ to type in the morning
Anyway power the set through a dim-bulb tester. If you don't have one, make one. All it is is a power socket wired in series with an incandescent light bulb socket. It'll limit the current going into the set, and if the set draws way too much current - i.e. a short - the bulb will glow very brightly, and divert the current from the television. If there isn't a nasty short in the television, the bulb will glow dimly, and the TV will get power, although not as much as if it were plugged directly into the wall. Stuff should mostly work though, tubes should light up, the picture will be smaller and the tuning might be a little iffy, but it will run though a dim-bulb tester. You can also use the tester to reform the electrolytic capacitors (or attempt to) by letting the set run for a while, then changing the light bulb to a different wattage, letting it run for another hour or so, change the bulb.... It might reform the caps, it might not. Leaky or limping electrolytics will affect the rest of the set, most noticeably you might get a loud hum that drowns out the audio, or rolling bars of interference on the screen.
But, in the end, you'll need piles of new capacitors. And resistors - stuff larger than about 1meg ohm tends to drift upwards. Replace any that are off-spec.
Ok, I'm rambling again....
BTW - post chassis pictures! I want to see what's in there!
-Ian