[Kamakiri]

I have a friend in your area of MD that comes this way quite often, and he's brought his sets (along with others) for me to work on when he comes up. So far I've worked on 6 sets for him. That's really not a job that can be done in a day. The fastest restoration that I've done took me 3 weeks from unknown to done and running.

As far as more robust parts, you can to a degree. Things like capacitors and resistors can be upgraded significantly from their original counterparts, making them much more reliable. Things like transformers, yokes, and other hard parts, you pretty much have to use what's available, which means whatever the set came with. Fortunately it looks like on your set, that all of that stuff is still good.

Now as far as a reliable "daily driver" set, you'll get a lot of opinions here, but IMO you just can't beat an early 1960s Zenith. They're the top of the list as far as reliability goes.

Here's a picture of my 1961 23" Zenith console. I use this set almost every day and have put hundreds of hours on it since restoring it with no issues. If you're looking for a set of a similar era to yours, just about any Admiral is an excellent choice.

I really didn't mean to temper your enthusiasm on the set you've got. It's a very nice looking set, and should be able to be made into a watchable set with little difficulty. But if long-term reliability is the goal of owning a vintage TV with little else to do other than turn it on and watch it, this may not be your ideal candidate.