1965 zenith COLOR!
 

I just got my first color tv, a 1965 zenith!!!!!!!!:D
will post pictures tomorrow or next week

:yes:those zenith are great performers, wish I would kept mine. Had ultra cheap photo paper cabinet. TV was AWESOME!! actually ran 6 months continious before vertical went flat unrestored.

:thmbsp:

:banana::banana::banana::banana::banana::banana:

I have my Papaw's 1965 metal cabinet woodgrain set that I NEED to take to Terry's sometime. Missing the VHF knob, it has the UHF tuner.

Mine has uhf all the knobs, and a meatal cabinet

I havent fired it up yet im probbobly going to do that tomorrow

next week before a photo , wood grain metal cabinet sounds just like the one i got from ka-zoo mich. a few weeks ago ,except mine just has vhf tuner.

It should have the 25MC33 chassis in it. A quite reliable one in my opinion. Check the can capacitors after it's on a while to see if they're warm. It would be best to slow start it with a variac and horizontal output tube pulled. That helps "reform" old caps bring them back to life. Regularly used sets should be recapped though. This chassis only has a few crappy caps to worry about. I have a '65 that has never been restored and I have been using it since '08. I keep meaning to recap it I just get lazy and don't...LOL.

And believe it or nutz, the woodgrain metal cab is really quite nicely done...Its some sort of a vinyl applique, & actually FEELS sorta like wood does.

You're right Sandy, I have a '67 Zenith like that and it looks really nice.

yea right now iv to many other projects that have to get done before winter ,like fire wood is one right now put them in a nice safe place and then i have all winter to play and make these tv like new again.thats when ill be able focus on them and everyone here will leave me alone long enough to do what i want to do.

Looking forward to seeing pictures. Someday I'll get a Zenith roundie. I have several RCA'a, 1 Admiral, and a Maggie. All now working.

you might try to do what i did since spring time ,if you have a local craigslist just start a post i have 3 [ looking for older tv's] , a take pictures of color roundies and post them along with a description of what you want ,if you just say old tv's youll get 80-90's tv's, people dont know or understand what a roundie is or what shape there crt is, iv had a lady with a port hole zenith think it was a old small washer mech. ,pictures are important and of different brands. they will call you and say i have one in the basement that looks like one you have posted ,and you know there all roundies you posted but they only see the one like theres,try it you be suprized what shows up i got 5 b&w from one guy 2 were roundies spartin / westinghouse all for 50.00 bucks. most people think no-one wants the real old tv's and dont bother hauling them out of a basement, most of the tv's were there before they were born and it always been there why mess with it.

I tried that route. We got color TV late here in Idaho. Not many left around. Only picked up 1 roundie Admiral color and haven't seen any since. In fact, I have only seen 1 other color tube set for sale, a square tube GE. Lots of B&W sets like every other town. All I ever got in response to my ads were trying to sell me cheap BPC sets or 80's-90's consoles. One guy wanted one to make a fish tank out of it. Of course he wanted the CTC-100 in my sample pics. I don't own one(yet) but I put it in my ad to show what I'm looking for. I'll run across a Zenith someday. I have plenty for now.

that same thing happened to me a lady down indy wanted one of mine to make into a art project , she said she would clean it out for me [gut it ] i didnt have to do that if it will save her money, i told her how about NO why dont you use one of these late model bpc sets that are a dime dozen from china ,she wanted those ones with legs on it .email back why not put 4 legs on a plastic tv and call it your art project challage .lol

surprising for a color, but its not a roundie

althogh it has a small green tint around the edges of the picture tube?
many hours of use?
bad picture tube?:scratch2:

Ahhh.. you must have gotten Zenith’s first rectangular set. You’ll know if it has a round screens convergence assembly on it. (sliders instead of knobs). That one is a GREAT set. As a matter of fact.. that chassis was the first vintage set I owned as a kid. My Uncle got it on trade (1978) and it was a Space Command. Surprisingly.. the flyback was bad, so I had him replace it, and then.. I had him install a Chromacolor picture tube. (boy.. what a difference that made)
Anyway.. got 10 more years out of it.

As for the “green halo”.. don’t worry about it. ALL Zenith tubes did that, even when they weren’t that old. RCA tubes always developed cataracts, and Zenith had the halo, which in my opinion is the lesser of the 2 evils. Has nothing to do if the tube will be good or not. You’ll just have to see how the picture is, or test it on a CRT checker. Zenith called that generation of color tubes the “Sunshine Tube”, and then they went to the Chromacolor series. The Sunshine version wasn’t bad, but in my opinion, didn’t produce an outstanding picture.
Good luck on it, and hope to see some screen shots!

it was sold before i got it home today!!!:tears:

yep, he who hesitates is lost, goes the old saying.

Now its for sale at the irvington flea market indianapolis indiana, or contact tvtimeisfun if you want to BUY it

it was turned on yesterday it has sound no hv thogh bad hv rectifier?

I got it back today!:yes:
its called the zenith $ervice $aver chaissis

those work well as long as you dont over restore it.

it comes on no buzz great sound, but no hv? picture tube isnt bad
is the hv rectifier the culprit?
horiz. output?

Or horizontal osc.
Or Damper
Or any one of a dozen other things in the horizontal sweep or HV circuits.

Start with a neon bulb test at the HOT plate cap. Any pulses there?

The picture tube is OK, but blue tested a little weak.
stuck a horz. output tube in there tuned it on, and It has a bad flyback, and horz. caps, and high voltage caps :tears::tears:

pictures arent the brightest, but you might see the tv:D

I really like that model. They're pretty hard to find around here, unless you have endless time to spend at estate sales. I rarely get to go to them anymore.

Its a nice metal cabinet set, but THAT SUCKERS HEAVY!:D
also my grandpa said that certain set has a problem with the flyback going bad:tears:
i got the thing from tvtimeisfun for $40 :yes:

Yes, they weigh a ton. I think if you removed everything plastic from the whole set, it would fit in one hand, all else is metal. I love these tanks, I have a 23" '67 model on a cart that looks somewhat like this. I have 2 1970 20" models that look very much like it too. One was saved from the dump and was slid on pavement on all sides but the face but works pretty well, the other is mint looking but has something wrong with it. As soon as I can get a decent work area together again, I'll combine the two sets into one perfect one, or maybe get 'em both working right and have a junky looking one with "character" :)
If I were you, I'd hold onto that one until you're more familiar with working on color sets and in the meantime look for a flyback and any other parts it may need. There are a few white ceramic caps in those that like to explode but that can be fixed with 5 bucks worth of caps, so no biggie. Trust me, if you hold on to it and wait patiently like I just said. You will be happy later.

oh ill have it for a while my grandfather has a flyback in the meantime ill replace the ceramic caps Thanks for the heads up on those caps :D

You're welcome! BTW, the term we like to use for those is "white time bombs" because they work fine one minute and blow up the next.LOL! I look forward to seeing your set working, I'm glad your Grandpa has a fly for it:) Make sure the cathode current on the horizontal output tube is adjusted as low as you can get it, it'll make the fly last a lot longer. 180-200mA is the range to shoot for, there should be a horizontal frequency control on that chassis. I'll bet your Grandpa know this already though. Good luck man!

how did you determine the flyback was bad?

Well the hv cage inside was coated over black flyback wax was all bubly, and coming off, and when i replaced the horz. output tube the cabinet rattled like crazy hummed (tuned it off just in time to save the picture tube!)

did it look like this

http://videokarma.org/showpost.php?p...1&postcount=22

flyback can look bad and be ok. You should try to determine its bad before replacing.

The normal failure mode of a flyback is smoke pouring out from it, and maybe the horz output tube red plating. Never heard of a bad one causing a cabinet to rattle nor do I understand the ref to turning it off just in time to save the picture tube. I don't see how a bad flyback could put a picture tube in harms way.

The rattle could come from the power transformer if there is a short on the B+ or if there is a shorted rectifier.

Then again I have seen bad HO tubes which have a short oftem accompanied by flashing. A bad tube could perhaps put a heavy load on the B+ which causes the rattle.

What is the source of the tube? Was it tested to be good?

new old stock tube pulled the hv rectifier out, and it didnt do it,
also after it was on before the tv smelled like bad smoke for the whole week!
:smoke::smoke: :pistols: :king: = dead king = more money to :smoke:

the crt got a leak the other day :tears:
but i got a good strong picture tube for it already in :yes:

If it's any consolation, I was told that the metal cabinet sets are more rare than the wooden cabinets. I have a 1964 model 5111 that I thought might not be as desirable as something with a nicer cabinet. What I was told (and it makes sense) is that the metal cabinet models were indeed lower end in their day, so as they developed problems or were otherwise retired, they were more often tossed as opposed to keeping around forever like people used to do. Often they were used as a stand for that nice new 19" portable that became popular in the late 60s through the 70s. People by then were probably tired of moving large and heavy sets around. Anyway, I hope to get my Zenith going properly sometime soon. I needed room and posted it along with several nice 50s black and white sets for sale and guess which one everybody wanted. It was the one set that I really wanted to keep as I don't have another early color set. I only posted it in hope that it might spark someone to travel here and take several from my collection, but I never got any seriously interested parties, that is unless I would let go of the "roundie!" I wish I had all of the "roundies" that I parted and tossed back in the 80s when you couldn't give one away! I have always thought that the 50s black and white sets were more interesting and easier to properly work on. There is a lot going on in a color set and it takes special equipment and the knowledge of its use to properly set up convergence and such. I am thinking about saving myself the headache and finding one of the few TV service men left around to give my Zenith a once over so that it will be reliable. It made a beautiful color picture after nearly 30 years of dormancy, but it only lasted a few hours and the color turned to black and white with a case of the jitters and a vertical interference line to the far left of the picture. Supposedly a crystal causes the color to go out in a lot of cases. Somebody here sent me a replacement for that, but I never got around to putting it in. The other symptoms that I mention tell me that some capacitors are in order. Finally, I am concerned about the horizontal efficiency coil. Mine is cracked internally, so you can move the end inside of the chassis around while the mounting end remains rigid. I assume that the windings are all that is holding it together and I don't know how much a little bit of movement might effect the inductance. As most people know, the horizontal circuitry in these sets is a very critical point of maintenance, so I better find a replacement if possible. If anyone has some junked chassis and could sell me a good coil I would greatly appreciate it.