Westinghouse TX42F430S 42" 1080p LCD TV

[Dgtech]

Re: Westinghouse TX42F430S 42" 1080p LCD TV

A picture of what the screen looks like whenever the set fails is a big clue as well. I know it's a pain to do this after you have it all torn apart but... It should have been the first thing you should have done.

I have had a couple of these sets that had a very easy fix. Westinghouse had used some weird type of goo on their ribbon cables that go to the T-conn board. All I had to do was clean them off gently with alcohol. I can't say that this will definitely fix your problem but it's an easy way to find out.

Read the thread here at the link below - post #13

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...nghouse+ribbon

[stevekasian]

Re: Westinghouse TX42F430S 42" 1080p LCD TV

Thanks for the response Dgtech.

Here's a link to a video of the problem for anyone who might have any ideas:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJYoJPsrhhs

Note: The stepped appearance of the fade action towards the end is not what actually appears on the TV's screen; It is an artifact of the auto-iris in the camera I used to record it. The fading of the W logo is smooth and gradual with absolutely no discernible "stepping" at any point during the fade.

SK

[stevekasian]

Re: Westinghouse TX42F430S 42" 1080p LCD TV

Ah-HA! I tried powering up the TV, waiting a reasonable amount of time for it to boot up... and as always, the W remained on the screen, slowly fading. So I unplugged the T-CONN board from the mainboard while it was on. The W sort of "wiped" from the screen. I then pressed the INPUT button on the remote a couple of times and promptly plugged the T-CONN back into the mainboard. And what do you know... the Input Selection menu was displayed on the screen! But it was unresponsive and slowly fading just like the W was. I repeated this several times with different stuff showing up on the screen each time (based on whatever buttons I had pushed on the remote), with the screen freezing and fading each time.

So my conclusion is that the T-CONN is displaying whatever initial signal goes to it when powered up, then immediately freezes the image and fades out.

I just won the T-CONN in an auction today for $8.99 :-) So it looks like I'm gonna have a working 42" 1080p LCD TV before the week is through :-DDD. The cool thing is I already completely re-capped the power board, and ordered a mainboard replacement for around $70 or so only to find out it wasn't the source of the problem. So I can keep this thing running basically forever from here on out at little or no added expense. :-)

Anyone who has any experience with this type of T-CONN related issue, please post here and share your experiences, as this is a new one on me and doesn't seem to be a very oft reported symptom of a bad T-CONN anywhere on the internet.

Thanks to all who threw their 2 cents into this thread.

And special thanks to Ggtech, without whom I never would've placed my "blind-faith" bid on the T-CONN last week!

SK

[Dgtech]

Re: Westinghouse TX42F430S 42" 1080p LCD TV

I am glad you tried that way of testing the TV. I never would have thought of unplugging thte board while the TV was on but that was the only way you could see what you saw. So the TV was changing but the board wasn't updating or refreshing the screen to what those changes were. Very good.

You're not really stuck with that mainboard. Sell it on Ebay to someone who can use it. Get some or all of your money back from selling it. Dont set it on your shelf.

[stevekasian]

Re: Westinghouse TX42F430S 42" 1080p LCD TV

Well, I was going to do that at first... but then I started remembering the fact that this particular TV has about one of the worst histories of failure out there, and it almost always seems to be related to the mainboard in some way. So if the contrast ratio and picture is as good as I think it's gonna be, I may just keep this thing forever and the hard-to-find parts with it. We'll see... Aside from it's apparent ROM issues, the thing's got great reviews. And 42" makes a very nice size computer monitor :-)

[stevekasian]

Re: Westinghouse TX42F430S 42" 1080p LCD TV

Conclusion:

Just received my T-CONN board in the mail today. Installed it and the TV works flawlessly. I am now the happy owner of a gorgeous 42" 1080p Westinghouse LCD TV. :-)

It's the perfect size for a computer monitor too... hehehe

[Dgtech]

Re: Westinghouse TX42F430S 42" 1080p LCD TV

I'm glad to hear of your success. Hopefully, this board will last longer than the last one.

[bel1river]

Re: Westinghouse TX42F430S 42" 1080p LCD TV

Conclusion:

Just received my T-CONN board in the mail today. Installed it and the TV works flawlessly. I am now the happy owner of a gorgeous 42" 1080p Westinghouse LCD TV. :-)

Hi Stevekasian,

It's the perfect size for a computer monitor too... hehehe

How's your TV holding up? Just curious, as my son and I are about to go through the same process of attempting to salvage our TX42F430S and use it for my daughter's new X-box.

[Dgtech]

Re: Westinghouse TX42F430S 42" 1080p LCD TV

If you have the same symptoms, try the tconn board. This is usually the cheapest board to replace. It's worth the try. I'd do a visual check on the caps first though.

[stevekasian]

Re: Westinghouse TX42F430S 42" 1080p LCD TV

How's your TV holding up? Just curious, as my son and I are about to go through the same process of attempting to salvage our TX42F430S and use it for my daughter's new X-box.

Hi. I'm sure you're probably never going to see this post, as it's been months since you posted the reply above, but I thought I'd reply anyway...

My Westinghouse TV still works great! No problems at all. And I love it!

I hope your efforts were successful!

SK

[orgwood]

Re: Westinghouse TX42F430S 42" 1080p LCD TV

I too am attempting to "fix" my Westinghouse 42" LCD TV with most of the symptoms described here in this thread. I have purchased and replaced the Power board with no improvement in symptoms. I was able to get the TV to change to blue LED and start receiving over the air TV signals by using a hair dryer to heat up the caps in the power board output side. That's when I asked a repair person on ebay what he thought about the heat diagnosis. He said that when caps go somewhat dry, heating them up will get them working somewhat again as to isolate the problem ones...hence I bought a different power board but that hasn't turned out to solve the problem. So I have a good power board if someone wants to buy it from me!

I decided to keep up with the heating by hair dryer and found that when I removed the shield from the main input board and started directing the heat on the caps on this board only, I was able to get the set to begin functioning again so it must have been that I was directing the heat towards the main board when i was heating up the power board. I now direct the heat only at the main board with the power board loose and floating so it is significantly away from the main board.

I've purchased some replacement caps from Mouser and they should arrive later this week. I'll try recapping a few suspect ones that have 0-85C temp range while others have 0-108C range. Then I'll have a clearer idea of what the "real" problem is. If anyone has "fixed" their main board by component repair, please let us know what you did. I'm also suspecting that the solder bump RAM chips might have intermittent contacts as I've run into that problem on some laptops I've fixed.

[orgwood]

Re: Westinghouse TX42F430S 42" 1080p LCD TV

Got my caps in and found the time to start re-capping the signal/main board yesterday. I started with one 100uF 85 C cap up near the power connector but found that not to be the problem..remember I'm leaving in the new caps so this could be a progressive repair. I then focused the heat down towards the middle of the board on the right side opposite the heat sink and intended to replace them in groups of identical values where the large FETs are...2 - 47uF @ 50V, then 1 - 1000uF @ 6.3V and I thought I could tell that the set was responding to less heat. I finally replaced a single 470 uF @ 16V that is on top of the 150 inductor before I had to replace the 3 - 220 uF @ 16V down in the FET area and lo and behold, the set began working properly again. I have been doing my repairs while this TV is in my garage that I keep around 40 F for our very long winter this year so I'm pretty confident that this fixed my main board. I was getting pretty worried that I had a semiconductor intermittentcy but am confident that this was just a bad cap issue where those FET inductor switching supplies just wear down/out the caps over time ESR surges or something like that. I'll put it back together soon and get back here if I find out anymore that changes this repair.

[orgwood]

Re: Westinghouse TX42F430S 42" 1080p LCD TV

For all those searching this thread for a VERY common problem causing all sorts of display gibberish, I've found ONE cap causing a lot of it. That 470uF cap next to the MPU on the main board is the culprit. Seems to go bad on nearly every set so even if you buy a pulled "working" board, you'll probably experience the same situation, only different.