24NC31 Zenith, give me your thoughts...

[Carmine]

This is the set that is shown in this picture, taken about a year ago:



However, not long after the picture collasped and disappeared while in use. I haven't touched it since this week. Powering it up showed that it had lit tubes & dial light, but no HV or sound.

I found a belfuse on the chassis that was open.

Q: I don't know the rating of this fuse off-hand, but if it's something like 10 amp 250v, can I just use an automotive fuse (they're all 250v rating) of the same amperage and then re-enclose it in the little plastic box for safety & appearance?

Naturally I want to know why this fuse opened. The set had worked well after I did the convergence, but seemed to suffer from cornea-discharge more than usual. I attributed this to humidity in my basement, but knew that if I ran it for any amount of "real" time, I would have to clean out the HV cage.

Well there was more than the light fluffy dust inside... Rather a nice coating of tar & sh*%t. This prompted me to pull the whole chassis. I think this is pretty high-hour set, because most of the tubes, including the CRT are replacements. But at least I won't be dealing with and brittle PC boards!

Here is a look inside the cage:



The red rubber layer of second anode insulation looks cleanly broken at the cage grommet. So clean in fact, that I question if this was a "normal" break in the insulation.

Q: Fix this, and how?

I only see 2-3 paper caps in the set chassis.

Q: Should I replace them? Are there more I should replace? What about the cans?

I'm really keeping this set around because I like the bezel design, and because I think this is Zenith's last roundie. However the cabinet is cheap, especially by Zenith standards, and I am hoping to someday find a "correct", electronicaly trashed set with a nicer cabinet.

In other words, it will be removed from the cabinet again at some point, but won't see regular use for a long time. I don't want to replace caps just to do it again years later.

The rest of the pics will be for before/after pics.









First project for the workbench I built more than a year ago!