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Why does nobody warn you that the $60 CRT safety cap kit is the easy part
I dropped $60 on a cap kit for my 1987 Zenith console and figured I was basically done, then the flyback arced and took out the HOT transistor on the first power up. Turns out the real cost was the $45 isolation transformer I should have bought before I ever poked around inside a live chassis, plus a trip to a guy in Mesa who laughed at my solder joints. So I'm out about $105 and a weekend, and the set still doesn't hold vertical. If you have done a first CRT recap, did you buy the isolation transformer first or learn it the same dumb way I did?
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nathanbennett26d ago
Learned the same dumb way, minus the guy in Mesa. What finally got me through my first recap was making a cheap discharge tool from a screwdriver and a wire to ground, then checking every cap with a meter before I touched anything. Also stopped powering up the whole set just to see if it worked, started pulling the chassis and testing the power supply on its own first. The vertical issue is usually a handful of caps in that section, so double check you didn't put one in backwards or miss one hiding under the heat sink. Did you get a schematic for that Zenith or are you going off the old caps?
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