I am going to conclude this long thread with a big thanks for all the help. I will say that every person out there interested in this hobby should do what I call basically a rebuild. I have been toying around with old radios and TVs for 25 years. I feel as if this ONE project taught me more about what is going on in not just a television, but more so a vintage television. There is a big difference.
Through the years I stuck for a long time with thorough cleaning, tube testing, and wire repair for what was mostly a radio collection. My regular use TV sets in the 80's were from the fifties. If I couldnt fix them with new tubes or a CRT I would have to send them to the repair shop. Then I progressed to jumping across to locate bad electrolytic capacitors and checking/replacing resistors which was a big step. I had a lot more working pieces in my collection at that point.
Now I feel I have crossed a new threshold restoring this RCA. All the confusion with color coding of the factory and replacement power transformers taught me a lot about tracing circuits and understanding what makes things tick. I definitly refined my soldering technique to the hilt. It was kind of neat changing maybe 3 to 5 caps a night and watching the set slowly come back to life. Its really amazing and satisfying to see what was a smoking piece of junk once again working nearly as good as the day it came out of the store. Its like raising the Titanic!! A good feeling.
By the way my set was viewable by New Years. I missed my original goal of Christmas and someone suggested going for New Years. So I made it!
There are some minor adjustments and the volume is still low, but the picture is VERY chrisp with great sync and size. I should have a very reliable set now. The other working sets that I have never get played longer than maybe 45 minutes at a time. They are all original. No recaps. I can watch this set all afternoon if I want. Great stuff!!
