65hc15 and a tall tale...by Redfury

Hey guys, it's been a LONG time since I've been on these forums, TV's have been working fine, electronics in general have been happy for the most part since I got the Toshiba replacement for the Mitsubishi that had all sorts of problems due to coolant leaking. I learned a lot from you guys and from that whole ordeal ( like never put a wood cabinet style big screen down or up any steps unless it plans on dying where it rests for eternity ).

Well, as you can well guess, I'm not here to just shoot the poop, I've got me a problem and it's mostly due to my inability to say "when".

See, I got me this nice big 65" projection monster for cheap...$250 bucks cheap and it's been running just fine and dandy down here in my basement with my new 7.1 surround sound and my awesome Harmony 880 remote. Everything is a click and enjoy.

Well, one day the TV just went RED. I immediately pulled the cord and started looking for leaking coolant, smelled for something that may have burnt, etc and let it sit for a few days unplugged ( cycled the power button to discharge any left over power as well ). Seemed to do the trick, but every once in a while it would do it,and then it stopped, but sometimes the screen would flash red until I did something on screen, such as change an menu on my Xbox 360...something that would change the way the pixels were displayed in enough of a fashion for something to reset. Then one day, it stopped happening. Thought that was weird, started to let the wife know that it's time to start shopping for that flat screen TV soon, this one may not be of this earth for too long. Ha, that was 6 months ago. It developed right in the middle of the screen a blue kidney shaped spot, probably about the size of an average mans thumb from the tip to the first knuckle. It bothered me a little, but it was easy enough to overlook.

Well, it wasn't easy enough to overlook "that day". "That day" was the day that I was going to play a gaming session with my boy for a few hours, but that spot just bothered me, I had some time, and decided to open up the cabinet to investigate. So, with the help of my daughter, we disconnected the top of the set and set it aside and started to look at the lenses. HOLY GARBAGE! Look at the size of those insects! That's GOTTA BE IT! So, with my trusty screw driver and lense cleaning cloth I dug in.:T I figured that pulling the lense and reinstalling it shouldn't mess up the convergence too much since it's in a fixed position with the index pins. Well, to my disappointment those bugs I found were TINY. It's amazing how much those lenses blow up an image! :rofl:

So, from left to right I cleaned. I figured after cleaning the first two lenses, I'd check the picture. No change.
We pulled the screen off and I went into the Red gun lens. I saw it, a black spot...it had to be the cause!onder: But it was beneath the lense on the inside...I gotta get to that spot!

Y'know how there are 4 screws that hold the upper lens on, and beneath that there are A LOT more screws that hold a PLATE that holds the lens on? Yeah, that's the one I took off.:rolleyesno:

After it dawned on me that that plate holds the glass in place against the seal that keeps the coolant from spilling everywhere, I went into abrupt panic mode :yikes:

I immediately went to google and started doing quick searches and learned quickly of how corrosive that stuff is to circuit boards. This I should have already known, and this is what I get when I try to channel my not quite dead 95 yr old grandfather who was a TV repairman. Apparently when you try to channel the living, they include a cruel sense of irony along with anything you might get from them.

Pictures are being taken, brain is racing...dang there's a lot of connections under this thing! How do I get that big red wire OFF? I don't want to damage anything by forcing it...I CUT it. Now, before you rip me apart for cutting any wires in there, I tried man, I really tried. That wire went up to the convergence panel up front and I couldn't get it to loosen for the life of me from either end. More importantly, I needed to get that circuit board out of there because it was getting coolant in more and more places the longer I left it sit.

I got the circuit board out, washed it off with some water, then proceeded to douse it with 71% alcohol, and then I emptied a full bottle of 91% alcohol on it and blew it out with compressed air, let it sit in the sun to dry, and started looking to see where I could get new coolant to replace the loss.

In the mean time, I decide to investigate further into what the spot was...the coolant has leaked, I'm in elbow deep, why not, right? If I had only opened my "eyes" a little bit, I would have realized that the "spot" wasn't debris in the coolant, or a spot on the lens. It was ( you probably already guessed it 4 paragraphs ago ) burned out pixels on the tiny TV screen UNDERNEATH the GLASS that the coolant resided in. I discovered this by prodding the spot with the end of a clean zip tie to see if I could touch the spot.

So, long story longer. I ordered some coolant from Amazon, filled the cavity back up just enough to keep any air bubble from showing in the lens and put the set back together.

I soldered that wire and heatshrinked it and tested the set....it fired up, no crackling, no smoke!:clap:

However, I'm now looking at convergence since the set has obviously lost it's memory. The problem is, I can't get into the convergence controls because my Harmony remote won't power up the set or enter the menu and I can't figure out how to do it manually.

It's entirely possible that Something went screwy with the front panel wiring where the sensor is, but I'm not sure which wires I'm working with or where to start to see if I'm even getting an IR signal INTO the set to move forward, which is where I'm hoping you guys can help steer me. If this set goes Kablooey, then fine. I'll be sad, TV's will be purchased and life will move on....In the meantime, this is my personal "get back in the why did you even have to monkey with something that was perfectly good in the first place wifes good graces)