[cj_reha]

Good news, it's alive!

I finished the project that had been occupying my bench for a good few weeks (recapping and repairing corroded traces on a Panasonic Travelvision 1.5" portable set from the early 80s), so I figured I'd dig the Zenith out and attempt to get it running again. I decided to go the ghetto route and just parallel six of my .0018uF caps together into a sort of "flower" formation and tack them to the back of the flyback for easier access. In the future I'll likely order the "correct" part, but I'm really cheap and this solution works just as well. I also replaced the vertical fuse - it is a 250V, 0.6 amp part for anyone who might have this problem in the future.

Fingers crossed and prayers said, I hit the power...it came right up! Everything was horribly misadjusted, but after a bit of tweaking I was able to get a pretty respectable picture out of it.

However, that victory was short lived. I was tweaking convergence and focus when the picture suddenly started shrinking, followed by the circuit breaker popping. It now does not stay on for more than a few seconds before the breaker pops again, so I've stopped powering it on to prevent damaging something.

I have yet to dig into the set, but I suspect the big oil cap went open. It appears to be original, and according to a few videos I've watched it is a moderate failure rate part. More soon...