Outa-Space

[Jon A.]

Originally Posted by zeno

Holy smokes you really scored on this one ! Best damn sets
ever made IMHO. Congrats.....

When you get inside,
Motor not stopping. On the back of the tuner there is a wheel
with tabs you twist to skip or stop each channel. on the
side of it is a rocker that works switches. The rocker sticks
so clean out the old grease & relube.

Age. Model or chassis # gives you model year. Model will
start with SC, SD or SE. S means Space Comand 2nd letter
is model year. Chassis # starts 25C***, 25D*** or 25E***
same idea. Date of mfg use 4 number date codes from major
parts. Build date is a month or two after the latest date.

Remote. Other than swapping rods nothing simple.

HV caps. This set has 5 seperate caps instead of one. They
should be changed if they havent yet. I dont think this chassis
can even cut a neck because of design of the vert output.
On newer sets the process is:
4-lead cap opens & HV goes up to 40KV +
Things start failing.
If the vert fails the yoke gets DC on it & heats up cutting
through the neck. Most of the time the HOT would short
& kill the set before the CRT went. We were a big Zenith dealer
& only did 3 or 4 CRT jobs IIRC.

73 Zeno

After much struggling I got the set turned around and the back panel off. I just found a very faded sticker on the back with the model and chassis numbers. The sticker itself is discolored so badly it almost perfectly matches the rear panel. There's another one with a run number.

So Tom (zeno), what do the stickers tell you? I'm still a bit confused. I'm not sure what year the Chromacolor came out; I think '72 was the first year for the flat chassis Super Chromacolor. BTW, where's the volume stepper in this thing? I've got to find out where to shoot the DeOxit once I get some.

EDIT: Well, finding the problem with the tuner drive didn't take long. I was trying to find the rocker you spoke of when I noticed that the tab wheel was missing its screws. I don't have many around here, but I managed to borrow one from my 600X remote. That was enough for testing before it went out of alignment. The 600X remote works everything just fine, I just have to think of the button layout of a 500 when I use it. The orange button does nothing on this set, check. I guess it's off to the hardware store to get proper screws and lock washers.