1959 Ekco TC346 restoration.

[AidanLunn]

Evenin' all!

A few years ago I spotted a slightly quirky looking set on eBay offered for sale by a house clearance firm in Lincolnshire. It was one of the most attractively-designed TVs I'd ever seen, but at £100 + courier costs it took courage to try and resist it. In the end, being a pessimistic opportunist (if there is such a thing), I decided to take the plunge and paid the £100+. A Saturday soon afterwards, I remember the nervous feeling of the delivery van from this house clearance firm being late. It was scheduled around 2pm. Come 5pm, nothing. I was getting impatient. Had I fallen for some kind of con on eBay? Not so it seemed as the sellers had plenty of positive reviews, so I gave it a bit more time and carried on working on the TV under restoration at the time (I can't remember for definite what it was but it may have been an Ultra V17-70 I used to own).

Come 9pm and it was dark outside. There was still no sign of this van or the TV, so I decided to phone the eBay seller's telephone number (a personal mobile number provided to all of that seller's customers). The seller reported that their drivers were running very late owing to a van breakdown and having to send out another van to meet up with it when one became available, load everything into the second van then continue on the pre-arranged route as they had other stuff to deliver and collect as well. Now I do have patience in bucketloads, but when the van still hadn't arrived by 11pm - 9 hours too late - I was feeling an odd mixture of impatience and worry (in case something had happened to the replacement van and its occupants). So I phoned the seller again, this time - with a little annoyance in her voice - she put me on hold and phoned up the van's crew. After a minute or two of hold music I got the response from her that they were very close - near Worksop. Around 15 minutes later, with me absolutely dog tired and it belting down with rain on a cold night the drivers turned up with the set strapped inside the back of their van but with no cardboard packaging etc. I quickly took it off them and ran inside with this bl**dy great weight of glass, metal and wood between my arms! A visual examination proved the set to be in worse condition cosmetically than the seller had shown in their photographs. Nothing wrong with the front, top, sides and back, but the bottom was covered in what I could only describe as mould and dirt. And rust. Lots of it. Obviously stored for many years in a damp environment. I then plonked the set down on its side at the back of the garage and there it stayed, serving as a sort of table to my right at the workbench for a few years.

Fast forward to March this year and the TV's temporary existence as bench-side table came to an end when I finally decided to restore it for use as its primary purpose - a television set. Now, before I start on a TV, I like to do my homework on the TV I'm about to undertake - reading service manuals, scouring both these and VRAT forums and even reading up on the restorations of TVs with similar chassis. A lot of the latter was done with this one as I could only find one reference to a prior restoration of a TC346, and that was one Trev did back in 2010, so much reading up on the T344, T345, T368 and T370 was in order.

Incidentally, here is the thread on Trev's example: https://www.vintage-radio.net/forum/...ad.php?t=61808

After this, just before it came to powering up, I decided that the metal fixings on the bottom of the cabinet needed to be examined, so I used this as an excuse to try and get the chassis out. Doing this is fairly easy on these, as there are two bolted screws that fit through the cabinet bottom and through the rimband mounting frame of the CRT. Or at least, it should be easy. Several of the screws necessary to remove the chassis, servicing hatch and the implosion guard holder were so rusty they had rusted into their holes. Once these screws were finally coaxed out, I removed the chassis from the cabinet. A cursory glance revealed that the set had had some service history. The CRT - a CME1703 - was (and still is) a Suffolk Tubes regun. I had not experienced anything from this regun firm but a quick search for "Suffolk Tubes" around this forum revealed I shouldn't be concerned about the tube's health than if it was an original Mazda. Also a blue 18K high wattage resistor had been soldered in to replace the 27K in the HT to suppressor circuit of video amplifier valve V5 (type 6F23). Well I say soldered, just one end was soldered in. The other was twisted around the leg of the next component in the circuit. Obviously either a hurried repair, or a repair where the repairer couldn't be bothered to have to get the tube out to properly solder it in. Its obvious repair history made me think this set could have had a long service life, maybe until past 1980.

By this stage I already knew that access to the component side of these is not easy, frequently requiring removal of the tube to gain access to many of the components. Fortunately, in my head I had formulated a plan when researching this chassis to alleviate the problem of having to continually disconnect and reconnect the CRT. This was to disconnect the CRT with its rimband frame, lean it against a small pile of books (although have it leaning on them by the scan coils, do not rest the weight of the CRT on them using the neck!) and solder in wire extensions to the CRT socket and scan coils complete with electrical tape around each individual solder joint in these wired extensions to prevent accidental shorting. (If anyone wants to do this for a future TV using a similar chassis, just remember to extend each wire one at a time, so you don't get wires confused!) Then it was the standard cleaning-up-enough-to-work-on-it-but-not-introduce-man-made-faults type of clean-up and hoovering.

Just before I tested this, I decided to snip out the mains filter circuit, hardwire in a mains plug (these originally had detachable mains leads) and replace that 18K bodged resistor with a 27K. The original 18K tested OK, though, so I swapped a 27K from my resistor stock with that 18K.

I gingerly switched on, as most of the electrolytics didn't look in a healthy state, although the smoothing can looked (and proved to be) fine.

After the valves came to life, I saw a sort-of cramped raster and decided to check around the tuner to see if I could find anything from the Aurora, which I found perfectly tuned on Channels 1, 3, 9 and 11. Now, what I find surprising about this set is the almost total absence of those black or dark brown Hunts decouplers. Just one or two dotted around here and there. However, the same couldn't be said of our old friend, Mr Waxy. He was seen everywhere along with his friend Mrs Unhealthy Looking Electrolytic. There was even a pair (one each) in the tuner, so it was decided to attack these first. Now, whenever I desolder a capacitor or resistor, if I find any other resistors soldered to that joint I will test those as well as the main component under examination while I just have one end of them unsoldered. This is just to make sure that I don't retread my footsteps when searching for other faulty components later. All of the ones I tested when replacing the wax paper and the 2uF electrolytic in the tuner were high. This, as you shall see if you read on, becomes a common theme with this TV. So after replacing these two caps and all those resistors, I decided to test a few other random resistors in the tuner. All the others randomly tested were OK and as the signal was thumping in through the speaker and a somewhat frame-distorted raster I decided to give the tuner several good blasts of Servisol and leave it overnight. The tuner, like the rest of the TV, was full of coal dust, so probably used in an old cottage with a coal fire in a village or an isolated location in Norfolk or Suffolk? (The TV is tuned for channels 3 and 11 - Tacolneston and Mendlesham transmitters).

For a while after this, it was just a case of replacing the electrolytics and wax capacitors one at a time along with any associated resistors that had gone high. Standard textbook restoration stuff.

That was until I decided to tackle a persistent fault where the TV would begin pulling on whites and then lose line sync just as you get the contrast at the perfect point. I begun searching around and found that a 100K in the AGC feed had gone high to about 150K. Replacing this sorted that!

The other only major issue was the EHT randomly falling for split seconds, raising the contrast and brightness up to full whack in the minute after a raster appeared would make the EHT behave itself for a while but then it would begin performing its "tricks" again. After replacing all suspect caps and faulty resistors in the line output stage made no difference, I decided to try my hand at valve swapping. But no, the 30P4, U191 and U26 all tested fine. It was then that I remembered the EHT smoothing system on the TMB272 and noticed something similar applies to these slightly later Ekco sets, too. Searching for the symptoms on the VRAT forums, I came across a restoration thread for a T368 or T370 where the exact same symptoms were found to be caused by erosion of the Metrosil around where it is fixed to the chassis. I didn't even bother considering replacing the Metrosil, I just took it out of its plastic pipe, hoping that this would resolve the problem. And it did. I kept the Metrosil's plastic tube to keep the solder joint that was at the top of the Metrosil in. I don't fancy EHT just randomly floating about inside the TV!

After this, I noticed that the testcard didn't look quite as sharp as these Ekcos are renowned for. And then I noticed more of the same type of resistor in the IF stages. As I went through these, almost all tested to be high. These TVs have 103 resistors inside and in short, I've had to replace 76 of them! I've never had to replace anywhere near half the resistors before on a restoration, let alone over half! Slowly, the picture began to improve to that Ekco clarity and crispness that we all know and love. I wonder if all the resistors needing replacement was down to the damp environment the TV was stored in at some stage prior to it landing in my hands?

After this, various other faults to do with old valves and resistors kept cropping up on each time I'd do a soak test (my usual standard time for soak tests is 4 hours). So this time I decided to leave it on all day through both days of this past weekend - effectively 30 hours testing in total (15 hours per day, with a couple of hours off in the middle of each day). No other faults showed up after that.

After that it was really just a case of cleaning up the cardboard covers, bezel and implosion screen and hoovering out the cabinet (including all the mould and muck on the bottom) and then putting everything back in its case.

All this makes it sound easier than it actually was, it's taken me almost three months of restoring this set when I could find the time. What also didn't help was that during this restoration, I came back from a week visiting my girlfriend to find a small mouse infestation in my workshop! As rodents - especially wild rodents - are extremely unhygienic, this left the workshop out of action while I dealt with Mickey and Jerry. Fortunately they had not been hungry enough to chew on any wires, including the TV's! Which is fortunate enough as my workshop is actually the house's built-in garage, and there is both a gas boiler and the mains RCD in there!

Here are a few pics of the initial stages during the restoration

[AidanLunn]

And here it is, fully finished and in its cabinet.

As the set was tuned for Tacolneston and Mendlesham, it obviously was used in the East of England. It was built in 1959, the same year that that region's ITV station came on air (27th October 1959, to be exact).

Now, I usually like to perform a little inauguration of my finished TV restorations by showing some vintage material from the ITV region it was used in. So what better way to inaugurate this TV than to show the inauguration of Anglia Television on it?

The transmitter in the 3rd and 4th shots is the ITA Mendlesham transmitter in Suffolk. At the time, at 1000ft, it was the tallest television transmitter in Europe.

[AidanLunn]

And finally, any mention of Anglia Television can't go by without this guy and his horse! Here they both are, making their first TV appearance.

[AidanLunn]

And a few more shots to finish off with.

The full Anglia Television opening footage can be found in two parts here:

Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQaTzNpW1fo
Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ED5AwQCq6L8

Well I hope you all enjoyed this restoration. I certainly did!

[Nuvistor]

Excellent restoration and write up. I do like this series of chassis from Ekco, capable of some of the best performance.
The infamous 27k video resistor, we used to fit a 27k 3 watt old style carbon resistor, never failed after that and with care could be fitted correctly without removing the CRT. My eyes and hands were a lot better then, couldn't do it now though.

Frank

[Reelman]

Good job Aidan, well done. Great to hear the whole story, makes it far more interesting!
Peter.

[Voxophone]

Excellent result and write-up. Interesting bit of Holmesian Deduction to guess where the set might have been used. A set like this in an old remote cottage with a coal fire is a great image.

[McMurdo]

You made that sound easy! I've been there myself with radios that became coffee tables then finally got restored. That glossy veneer makes the set look somewhat upmarket.

[1100 man]

That's quite an upmarket looking set- I'm amazed at the range of cabinet styles that Ekco produced at that time, presumably with a corresponding range of prices!
They must have been very confident that no one would need to change any components though. Seems a very un-servicable design, mounting the component side of the chassis so close to the tube. I'm sure with a bit of thought they could have made the chassis swing out in a similar way to the Thorn 1500. But I suppose making the serviceman's life easy wasn't that high on their list of priorities!!
I've got two sets that use this chassis which are waiting to be looked at but I really mustn't start any more projects until some of the current ones are finished!
Well done on a nice restoration and an entertaining write up- I like your choice of vintage material, especially the Anglia 'tin horse'
All the best
Nick

[The Philpott]

Outstanding. If you get any more lodgers in the future the best consistent mouse bait i have used is beef jerky (it also stays on the spike well due to the sinews!)

[slidertogrid]

Originally Posted by 1100 man

That's quite an upmarket looking set- I'm amazed at the range of cabinet styles that Ekco produced at that time, presumably with a corresponding range of prices!
They must have been very confident that no one would need to change any components though. Seems a very un-servicable design, mounting the component side of the chassis so close to the tube.Nick

I have a couple of sets with a very similar chassis one a Dynatron the other an Ekco .
The Ekco is as yet untouched but the Dynatron was repaired a few years back. it has been totally reliable since repair although the frame linearity has drifted a bit..
The chassis can be pulled back from the tube enough to replace most parts but yes I agree not the most serviceable set as the chassis has to be removed first.
The turret tuner on the Dynatron is slung under the chassis on brackets which adds to the dismantling required to get the chassis out.
What is the LOPT shroud like on your set? The one on my Dynatron is falling apart, the one on the Ekco seems to be an aftermarket replacement.
I don't remember seeing many of these sets back when they would have still been in service and yet there seems to be quite a few survivors around now?
My grandfather had a Dynatron table version right up to changing to Colour in the mid 70's
The set had never had the back off from new. Maybe that's why I didn't see many? Most didn't go wrong much?
Lovely set , excellent write up!

Rich.

[AidanLunn]

Thank you all for your kind comments.

Nick, the Anglia "tin horse" has a bit of history to it before Anglia Television:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglia_knight

The Philpott: I've usually found broken up Mars bar, Snickers or Lion bar with peanut butter spread on to be the most effective bait, as it's sticky so they can't just take it back to their nest, but it also contains most of the food that they would eat in the wild as ingredients.
_____________________________

Well, Gentlemen, I knew it was too good to be true, the TV has developed another fault, although this seems "valvey". After 10 minutes or so, the width comes in about 2" on either side, the top of the raster goes darker and wavy with sinusoidal waves and the line whistle turns more into a line squawk. This is intermittent and it snaps into and out of this, it's not a progressive contraction and expansion of the width. I've still yet to observe this with the back off, so it may not be a valve after all, but given that I've used old valves pulled from scrap sets and it seems to occur soon after warm-up, I'd say the chances of it being a valve are high somewhat.

In the restoration I did use a 30P4 and U191 that were both "pulls" from my "pull" stock as I had no NOS examples of a 30P4 and only one NOS U191 (but I'm wanting to use up my stock of pulls from older sets if possible before going on to newer valves). This was because the two that were already in there were so worn it took about 5 minutes for the pair to start working after warm up!

I've placed an order for more 30P4s and also a pair of U191s as the one spare I have is my last one.

Cheers,
Aidan Lunn

[Freya]

I would monitor the HT1, sounds like it could be dropping off.

[1100 man]

Originally Posted by AidanLunn

Nick, the Anglia "tin horse" has a bit of history to it before Anglia Television:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglia_knight

Hi Aiden,
Well, I never knew that That's what I love about this Forum: the sharing of knowledge and the discovery of new things. Thanks for that!
To re-iterate someone else's question, what is the LOPT shroud like? I have two of these chassis and the shroud on both has crumbled into dust!! Perhaps you could post some pictures of the front of the chassis.
Many thanks for the entertaining saga which, it would appear, is still unfolding
All the best
Nick

[Focus Diode]

Brilliant restoration, the early Anglia material looks perfect!

Cheers
Brian