Fire sets?
 

Let's do a I shouldn't be alive for antique TV's
Has anyone on here ever has a set that was in a fire, flood, demolition of a building that shouldn't have survived?

I got a 13" Magnavox BP portable that went through a fire in 1992. The CRT was melted down onto the chassis, and there was an inch of burned debris allover it. The owner brought it to me, just to see what it might do.

Hooked up power, and using a remote, turned it on. It actually played, and had a good picture! We cleaned the chassis the best we could for the owner, and he took it back home. Later, he told me that it ran for the better part of 5 years. He still has it.

That sounds like the "Christine" of TV sets. :lmao:

As the owner of a 1958 Plymouth, I can definitely say that they do NOT repair themselves. Mine just looks at me in the garage and says, "you want me to RUN again? Uhhhh....give me a couple years to think about that..."

Can't remember-Was '58 the 1st year of the fabled Slant 6 or the last year of the Flathead 6 ? Hard to believe a flathead design would last that long, but they did...

The 1958 Plymouth I had looked alot like Christine when the guy in the movie found "her."

I've owned so many examples of the Slant Six engine... Every one of them ran great with just a tad of maintenance, and a yearly valve adjustment. I think near the end, they got hydraulic lifters, and the valve adjustments were no longer needed.

The only thing I didnt like was working on the distributor on these engines... crammed under the low side of the engine. Fun replacing points in there... I'm showing my age here.

Just thought of this one: A customer had a house fire. They had cleaned up most of the fire damage, except for the living room where a BIG 25" Curtis-Mathes set was... The set had a hole burned in it, and had gotten soaked with water. The power company came and inspected the house before they turned on the power again... And found nothing abnormal. Turned on the power and left after doing a quick walk-through again.

Two or three hours later, we were working and cleaning and were not paying any attention to any odd sounds, until suddenly we heard a loud BUZZ sound from the living room. The big Curtis Mathes apparently had dried out, and turned back on. I thought it was on fire, until I realized that steam was coming out of it.

The people that owned the house gave it to me, and I salvaged the CRT for another project.

While I was away on a trip my CT100 decided to dead short one of the AC line caps effectively turning the tv on past the switch. C200 I think. It was running for a few days and did not burn down the house. I walked in and the smell of old tv hit me over the head. It stayed unplugged after that.

In the mid '90's, a lady gave me an '80's GE 25" color console that came out of her house after it burned. The cabinet received extreme water and smoke damage and the chassis had smoke damage. I powered it up just to see what would happen and it came on with a good picture. The cabinet was so bad that there was no fixing it and it would have been hard to sell a TV with a cabinet in that bad of condition; so, I used the chassis out of it in a similar TV that lightning had blown up.

Out of the same house came an early '80's RCA 12" B&W. I cleaned it up as best I could and sold it for $10. I never could get the fire smell out of that TV.

Tom McCahill, in his column in Mechanix Illustrated, evaluated the new fangled quad headlights, saying "two good headlights are better than four lousy ones."
:yuck::)

I used to read those Tom McCahill articles in every issue. I had a subscription for years to Mechanix Illustrated, and Electronics Illustrated. I sometimes wish I had kept them.

If I remember correctly there was a fire in a R&M fan manufacturer and just for fun one of the fire cleanup crews plugged in a fan after replaceing the wireing and it ran absolutly perfect allong with several others mind you this was in the mid 30's I love my R&M fans that I have from 1918 and onward.

I did as well and also loved the Tom McCahill articles too.

Not a TV but a Citation II amplifier from a demolished studio. A friend of mine pulled it out and dared me to try and get it playing again.
I still have it and it still plays great after cleaning and resistor(s), at least one on every output tube.
The worst TV I ever saw was a Zenith System 3 that a recluse smoker owned. The 9-160 was so covered in nicotine it looked spray painted. We covered it with 409 cleaner, let it sit overnight and hosed it off. After that we saw poor solder connections on the horizontal driver transformer. It fired right up after repairing them.
The house was another "trip"!!!!
Come to think about it, I did repair an Electrovoice FM tuner years ago from a fire. The customer cleaned it with "Easy Off" oven cleaner before he brought it to me.....

i have a halolight that caught on fire.
one of the few combos too with the tv radio and record player

The first year for the slant six was 1960.
It was designed for the Valiant, but they used it in the larger Plymouths and Dodges as well.
They still made the flatheads until the later 60's.
They used them in lift trucks and other off-road applications. They were sold as Chrysler Industrial engines. :thmbsp: