RCA KCS171E.....REALLY thin power to chassis wire....???

[Kamakiri]

Okay.....on the KCS171E RCA set that I felt sorry for and brought home and cleaned up, etc......

All of a sudden, no power to the set. On the left side of the two terminal power plug is a wire that's about as thin as a human hair, while the other side of the wire is standard size. The wire was broken, I soldered it, now it's falling apart. Before, the case was off for testing. Must have fallen apart during reassembly, this wire is SUPER brittle.

About the only thing that I can think of is that this set was built so cheaply that RCA figured they'd use this as some kind of fuse. If that's the case, I'll just use regular wire and solder one in. Or is there some other screwy reason for this super thin wire on one side of the power cord to chassis?