Bush BC6100 (Rank Z718 chassis)

[Tazman1966]

When you think of televisions with “in-line gun” tubes you think surely they cannot be that old (or maybe it’s just my age creeping up on me!) but sure enough the two sets that I acquired recently are. They are a pair of Rank Z718 chassis sets, one a Bush BC6100 and the other a Co-op CC6116 and they both date from 1974. They are both essentially the same plastic cabinetted, mechanically tuned, 18” colour televisions but with minor styling differences.

I was told that both sets were working and if you apply the term in its loosest form, you’d be right.

I’ll start with the Bush first as that was the one I felt the most sorry for. It also had the tattiest case of the two.

With these sets, it is the whole cabinet that slides off the chassis and tube allowing for pretty easy access to all areas and more importantly at this stage allowed me to give the cabinet a damn good scrub and shower! It was filthy dirty and at some time in its life had had a candle stuck to the top of the cabinet which had melted inside the set dripping all over the LOPT and EHT rectifier. Whilst the cabinet was now nice and clean, the condition of the painted on fake wood was dire with bits missing all over the place revealing the black plastic beneath. (Click on the thumbnails)


There was far too much missing for an amateur like me to attempt to paint all the wood grain effect back onto the plastic so there was only one option left and one that I always found to be very effective on these round edged plastic sets (when I worked in the TV shop back in the day) and that was to use “Fablon”.

My wife suggested that if this was going to be our kitchen-diner TV for any length of time, to cover it in a wood effect that would match our décor and that’s exactly what I did. It was easy to apply after I roughed up the surface with fine wire wool. As you can see in the photo, it matches our sideboard really well. (Apologies to all purists).



The electrics were fairly easy to sort out too. When switching on. the picture was dim and fluctuating in size with lines across the screen. It was also grossly over scanned (sometimes it would flick back to almost the right size). I suspected that the EHT was sometimes low and varying and set about investigating! There was evidence of much work on the left hand line scan panel and a good few ropey looking solder joints. I set about making good the work and also had a closer look at some rough work on the line drive transformer where the 2.2uF 350V electrolytic that gives (via a fuse) a start up charge to the Line Driver transistor had been replaced by a 0.47uF 1000V polyprop! Also the 68R resistor connected to the line output transistors had been replaced by two 150R resistors in parallel (nearly right!) but dangling on very long legs! These components were replaced and I was now left with a picture of the right size which remained steady.



The picture as it stood wasn’t much to write home about and the tube looked a bit grim but as the set was left on, it slowly started to improve. I reckon that the phantom twiddler had been in because plenty needed setting up. Even the convergence wasn’t right (unusual on an “in-line” I would’ve thought). Whilst setting up the geometry, I noticed that there barrel distortion on the horizontals at the top and the bottom so I attempted to adjust the N-S pincushion amplitude pot (which had already been replaced at some time) and it promptly fell to bits. I didn’t have another one (200R wirewound) and bridging it left me with pincushion distortion but an 82R 5W fixed resistor did the trick with just a tweek on the core of the transductor needed to balance the correction out between top and bottom.

Some finishing touches were needed to the front of the cabinet. The chromed caps on the tuner buttons were rubbed matt grey. I did bid on eBay for a NOS tuner unit for one of these complete with new buttons and replacement screw collars for inside but lost out with only eight seconds to go and by 66p. All’s well that ends well as they say and Mike Bennett supplied me with a set of buttons, thanks Mike. They were easy enough to fit after removing the tuner unit. The silver outline to the control panel and around the tube was worn off in places as well so I finished removing the rest of it with some “Brasso”.

I was very pleased with the result and it is now takes pride of place on the sideboard in the kitchen-diner.



What of the Co-op set you may ask? Well that’ll be over in the TV section as that is by no means the finished article!

Cheers for now.

[hans]

Good job!

Do you have more pictures of the inside?

[Tazman1966]

Hello Hans.

I'll take some more and post them within this thread.

Thanks,

Tas

[mark pirate]

Well done taz, another one saved

[Tazman1966]

Thanks Mark

Here's some pictures of the inside for Hans as promised. Hope they bring back some memories.

All the best,

Tas

[Mikey405]

Well done Taz -That looks like an excellent picture now.

[Steve_P]

Ah, it's one of them! Well fixed old boy....

Cheers,

Steve P.

[Zelandeth]

Nice one, it's always interesting when you find a set where Billy the Bodger has been before - I tend to find that figuring out what on earth they've been up to and rectifying it is even more satisfying sometimes than fixing a normal fault.

I actually quite like the look of the paler colour on the cabinet to be honest!

[Jimmyhaflinger]

My grandparents used to have this same set but it was a later version from 1976, it had a different control panel with an electronic tuner unit and slider controls, it also had an one-button coffin shaped ultrasonic remote.

Here in Italy they were marketed as Voxson Cromorama.