1949 RCA Victor Black and White TV Model 9-T-240
 

1949 RCA Victor Black and White TV Model 9-T-240

I just got this tv yesterday. Picked up for free from an indie filmmaker. Ironically this person got it for free a few years back from the family of the original owners. TV obviously does not work currently as you might guess, the guy I got it from for some reason thought it was a good idea to just plug it in and try turning it on....luckily nothing happened as it failed open somewhere ages ago. Quite possible this tv was last used before the moon landing even happened.

TV has never been recapped and honestly I see no evidence yet of ANY work ever being done on it. The tv is super dusty. I was a bit worried when I found out that some really old tv's have asbestos in them for insulation, which is obviously not good to breathe in. Luckily I see no evidence of any asbestos in this tv from what I have inspected so far but will proceed with caution.

Obviously going to recap all the electrolytics, paper, wax paper caps ect. And check the tubes, clean the dust out ect.

I checked the CRT first and it has no shorts according to the CRT tester. Emissions are not good but not bad, just weak. A bit surprising for a tv this old. CRT filament lights up which is good. I am noticing a blue glue a bit further ahead of the filament glowing, not sure if this is some short that the crt tester is not detecting? Anywho I am not going to bother further with the CRT or think about it until I get everything else restored on it.

I am still busy working on my other projects so this TV will have to wait its turn in line like the others. No cataracts which is nice, since there is no safety glass but instead a weird window cover that is attached to the flakey scratched up wood cabinet. No UHF tuner probably because UHF was not a thing back in 1949 yet on any meaningful adoption level. UHF tuners not even mandated until the mid 60s anyways.

24 tubes and boy is this thing heavy relative to the crt size. For a B and W set this thing is totally tubular.

Uploaded a few hastily taken photos of it, was busy last night but just wanted to get an idea of what I am getting into eventually.

https://imgur.com/a/MtRmPpv

This is the KCS28 chassis. A deluxe design which will work brilliantly when restored.
You will have to replace all the paper capacitors and the axial lead electrolytics. I have found the RCA chassis's mounted electrolytics, if they have not been abused by plugging in the set, generally survive. The dielectric will however have to be reformed. You will likely find most or all of them good.

A bit of an update: I started cleaning the tv and vacuuming it out with not much trouble. It looks much better now and I also cleaned the tube sockets and gently wiped the dust off tubes so I can read them and see them better for testing.

What is surprising to me is the fuse is not blown! It appeared to be intact and I could not believe it so I tested it for continuity and sure enough it was still intact. So nothing horrible happened to it that caused it to be taken out of service. This is reassuring. Furthermore I then carried on tested tubes, only have the ones in the metal shield left which are a pain to get out without damaging.

So far only a few tubes are bad on emissions mostly 6SN7s of which this tv has 4. The 6SN7s do not have any shorts or leakage though. The only tube that was completely dead was the HV rectifier tube which is an oddball a 1B3. It uses a rather low voltage for its filament. I tested it and doubled checked my settings and connections. It had no emissions and was totally dead. I guess that is what put this tv out of service...

Hopefully this was not caused by a bad flyback or vice versa. I will test the flyback in the future when I have more time.

Still confused about the blue light in the back of the next of the CRT near the cathode. The filemant gloes fine as it should and CRT tester did not indicate any shorts at all. Also the blue light only appears in the neck when I am specifically testing the emissions with the dial turned to the emissions part of testing. Tapping the tube gently has no effect. Not sure if it is some weird type of short that the tester is not picking up on or what.

I have verified the settings I used for the crt tube tester were indeed correct and this crt tester has proven itself to be fairly accurate and reliable as i tested on multiple tvs recently with believable results.

https://imgur.com/a/tjEvn6Z

That's not from a short. Could be some air has leaked in or the ion trap magnet is not positioned correctly causing some electrons to strike a metal surface. Or possible electrons hitting a glass support structure causing fluorescence.

A lot of these early sets were retired not because of a major fault but because it was replaced with a newer model with a bigger screen.

I recently finished restoring a very similar 8T241. I only needed to replace one part (vertical oscillator transformer) to get it running fairly well.

All of the electrolytics in mine were very leaky (15+mA leakage after hours of reforming) and replaced.

Hey Lain94, there were a couple of really creepy looking dudes here asking a lot of questions about you! :D

http://suzaku.live-evil.org/aannaa21.png

Lol.



1B3s were basically the universal monochrome TV HV rectifier tube for roughly 15-20 years. Almost all monochrome sets use a 1V HV rectifier and almost all color sets use a 3V HV rectifier.

Cutoff behavior of your tester may reveal if it's gas.

Gassy tube.

Every time I see a pile of tubes in my house, there’s a 50% chance there’s a 1B3 in it. Tge freaking things are EVERYWHERE.

Lol Hi Yamamaya42 thanks for the heads up XD. They must know I am getting closer to finding Lain.

Yeah that was my impression and assumption. It looked like it was gassy and foggy so to speak.

Really? Dang, I bought several lots of tube recently and out of several hundred not one of them is a 1B3...plenty of tubes I can use for my other projects and tvs but not this one. Also I have no 6SN7s lol which so happens to be some of the tubes that tested weak on emissions. I am going to be getting more tubes soon though and there is a decent chance at least a few are in this lot.

Either way it looks toast, I just hope it did not fail because of a bad flyback or if it failing damage something else.

Yeah that makes more sense. The CRT seems to be a little loosey goosey atm and will need to be secured better.

New update btw: Took a more thorough look under the chassis...and boy does it look gross. I can say for 100% certainty that some parts of the can caps were bad...in fact one looks like it squirted some stuff that resembles bird poo splatter...not a great look. I am removing the can caps...all of them yuck. Some of the flat molded paper caps are getting gooey and melty like a chocolate bar. And other caps are just coated in grease to the point where I am having trouble reading them.

I have my work cut out for me with this tv but I am not one to turn down a challenge. I am getting better gradually with recapping.

I uploaded a ton of photos of the chassis bottom view...feel free to skip pics and focus on the ones that are of interest. I tend to like taking tons of pics so I can remember what I was doing lol.

https://imgur.com/a/rmX8VsS

Any idea what those white tube shaped things are with the colored lines? I am guessing those are some type of wax paper cap but I have not seen this style before?