Packard Bell Color TV

[bhegges]

I would like to share my current project, a Packard Bell 1968 color TV, model CQ-956. The TV was purchased and remained here locally with it currently belonging to the original owner's grandson. Searching old ads would suggest this TV cost $599 ($4,500 in today's money).

Most of my project are old radios but this TV was too nice to not bring home, I have fended off several comments to convert it into a fish tank. My goal is to get it working to play old games, catching local TV news, and maybe some movies, probably 1 - 4 hours runtime per week.





I have so far replaced all of the electrolytic capacitors and swapped out the tubes with a set of NOS and/or tested good tubes (maybe unnecessarily). For now I am feeding signal in on channel 3 or 4 via a NES game console. Once powered on I get sound and picture, this is a very good start as there could have been countless issues to fix just to get to this point.

Now the picture is dim, fuzzy, and only displays black and white. High voltage measures about 26K which is a bit high and the big issue is after 5 minutes the high voltage cage starts to make a hissing noise, the horizontal tube starts to glow red, and then the internal breaker trips out. I do have a thread open on the Antique Radios forum and was suggested to look at some of the coupling capacitors feeding the horizontal output circuit. I am currently working on this along with sourcing two amperage meters to monitor and set the horizontal sweep circuits. My fear is that the issue is a failing flyback transformer.

I have replaced C166, C167, and C114. R204 measured 40% high so it will get replaced. Also R212 & R214 both measured high while R213 was open. The HV pot was turned all the way down which makes sense R212 & 214 measured high. Fixing this should help to adjust the HV within range. Once I get all of these parts replaced I will report back.