Asking for some advice
 

I bought - in the beggining of this year - a 1953/54 21 inch Admiral TV. It is not with me right now, it is in storage with a friend in another state, and only God knows when will I be able to pick it up. The interesting thing is, in the same city where my friend lives there's a very skilled young guy who learned how to restore electronically these old sets, right now he is working on a 1948 Philco that belongs to my friend.

Since the person who sold me the Admiral did some kind of a testing of the CRT and said that it is still good, I am tempted to pay for the young fellow to restore the TV for me.

So I started to wonder, in the name of keeping this TV working for the longest period as possible, wouldn't be wise for me to try to find NOS flyback and deflector coil for this TV??? I would hate to spend a lot of bucks on a restoration only to find out a few months later that the TV will not work anymore because of critical component failure. Keep in mind that in my town it is not easy to find skilled labor to work on those sets, so right now the TV is just in the perfect spot for someone who wants to try to put it in working order again.

That's a tough call. Honestly, most restored TVs don't get into daily 8 hour runs like they did when they were new, and I wonder what the chances of a hard part failure would be when used occasionally.

You can keep an eye out for some basket case chassis and store them for parts. Finding NOS parts for TVs is not easy.

John

If restored and adjusted properly and kept in climate controlled spaces horizontal systems usually don't experience flyback failure. I've ran CTC15 clones which were known for flyback failure daily for years on end and never bothered to track down a spare flyback (I knew the cathode current was adjusted to the minimum so the fly would run cool).

If you happen to find a good spare flyback and yoke there's no harm in keeping them though.

"kept in climate controlled spaces horizontal systems usually don't experience flyback failure"

What are the chances of a failure in a subtropical humid climate? This is the climate where I live.

Elevated if you don't use air-conditioning and or dehumidifier in the space you opperate the TV. High humidity is the enemy of transformers....They can take storage in high humidity (when powered on after that they'll run hot for a few minutes boil off the moisture then be fine) but if you are using the set regularly and the space you use them in is not air-conditioned and hot and humid then regular cycles of absorbing moisture then boiling it off will be very hard on it...I wouldn't do that to a set I care about.