National TV-7W

[decojoe67]

Originally Posted by snelson903

it also looks like there was a small record player in the top compartment ,but thats the only part i never got, does anyone have a picture of it.

I've been into vintage TV's for years and can tell you that you have a VERY rare set there! I can only remember seeing one other in a photo. It's easily as rare as a pre-war.
It would certainly be worth the time and expense to restore it!
I'm envious!

[Eric H]

I picked up mine on eBay for what I thought was a fairly steep BIN price, the next one that turned up went for twice as much! They are a sought after set.

[snelson903]

the reason i posted it was early on in this thread Phil nelson and Bandersen was talking about how rear this airline model was, when i seen the picture bandorsen posted i said thats the tv i picked up 2 months ago, so posted 2 pictures of it on the ad he posted. i thought he like to see there was another one out there .i was able to get every part from the lady while i was there ,but the record player and was glad to be getting what i did and getting out of there.

[bandersen]

I found a TV-2 booster but it's so nice I'm going to keep in intact rather than scavenge the knob.

[bandersen]

Here are some more photos of the booster I took while cleaning it.





It has a turret tuner with removable sections inside.






Neon bulb pilot lamp

[TV'S&MORE]

Nice score. I always thought the National emblem was a nice touch these boosters. They made 2 versions of this one with the knob and one without.

[TV'S&MORE]

When I first purchased this set the previous owner he told me when had plugged it in and turned it on and he said it started smoking. Needless to say I was concerned but, not discouraged. Hopefully the smoke was friendly smoke and not the transformer or filter choke. When I got home and pulled chassis from cabinet I found that the brightness control and the on-off / volume controls were frozen and they had been turned around and around pulling the connecting wires from there connections wrapping the wire with a resister attached into a ball around the pots. It appears that what ever was used to lube these controls has a tendency to dry up freezing the controls in position. On my other National TV-7M all of the controls in the front are very stiff and frozen in the rear probably because those are seldom adjusted. I was reading a very early videokarma post from 2003 where the owner of the exact same TV needed to disassemble clean and reassemble his controls because they were frozen solid. I am hoping I can get by just using Deoxit to loosen these controls without having to open them up. I saw on Phil Nelson’s website he had to take one of these controls apart to make a repair. From the picture I saw they seem to be the friction pad type. Are these more fragile than other types? What’s the best type of lube? I have some dielectric silicone compound would that work? I think I have everything I need to get started. I am curious see Bob’s restoration of his TV when he gets time to start on it. I am sure it will be very informative. Maybe we can compare notes. I Don't want to hijack Bob's post but,my question seems related to the topic. Any advice or comments would be greatly appreciated.

Regard’s

Roy (TV’S&MORE)

[ChrisW6ATV]

It would probably be good to try your Deoxit on the controls a couple of times, particularly the shaft areas, to see if it will soak in over a period of time. If you have no success, try WD-40 on the outside of the shafts. When you get done (whether you succeed without disassembling the controls or not), Deoxit has another product called Fader Lube that should be good for the interior parts of the controls (particularly after using WD-40). I think I bought mine at a Guitar Center store.

[TV'S&MORE]

Thank's Chris. I will go get some today. I have seen this deoxit product before. I quess I should have read the can.

[bandersen]

I finally got around to working on this TV I decided to restuff all the caps since most of the originals were still present. I also used carbon comp resistors as much as possible.

The first thing I did was puzzle out some old repairs like this twist-loc that had been jammed in.


Once I cleared out that mess, I found some NOS parts to replicate the original look.




I'd never seen these SOLITE type of caps before. They turned out to be very easy to restuff

[bandersen]

I left the ceramic doorknob type caps for the horizontal alone, but restuffed the vertical with new ASC high voltage caps.


A few of the resistors in the high voltage divider change were out of tolerance and replaced.


I went with NOS for now, but have some modern high voltage resistors ready if they don't work out.

[bandersen]

The brightness and all three high voltage pots were frozen and had to be taken apart. All you need to do is carefully pry up a bit of metal and the back covers come right off. I used electrical parts degrease to clean out the old lubricant. Isopropyl alcohol works well too. After cleaning, I used white lithium grease.



Here it is all recapped and ready for a first power up

[Sandy G]

Didn't National make the metal-bodied set w/a big "Power" meter on the side, that was sposed to show power of the video signal ?

[N2IXK]

Originally Posted by Sandy G

Didn't National make the metal-bodied set w/a big "Power" meter on the side, that was sposed to show power of the video signal ?

Yes. It wasn't really a "TV set", but a test instrument for installing and pointing antennas. A field strength meter with a built in picture monitor.

[bandersen]

First power up was a partial success in that I got a picture but no sound.


Further investigation revealed a cracked 6AT6 that had gone gassy but still had filament continuity.


Picture was still a bit dim and weak though. Bypassing the old selenium rectifier helped a bit.


Eventually, I tracked down a bigger issue - an open peaking coil. Luckily, a little soldering touch up on one end restored continuity.

That improved the picture quality and brings me to what I hope is the final issue - poor horizontal stability.


I think this series of images taken while using a 7VP1 test CRT illustrates the problems.

Adjusted for a good picture.


A short while later tearing appears. Tweaking the horizontal hold will get rid of it for a little while.


A bigger issue occurs when there are large areas of bright and dark. Seems like the video is causing a horizontal offset. This set does have DC restoration that uses an average of the video signal as a grid bias. Seems like that might be leaking in to the horizontal circuit somehow ? Tough to track down since it's not always a problem.