Coolant Leak on Mitsubishi WS-A65 CRT RPTV

[SurrealMustard]

i2c and grille

Yes, and I would also check out ebay. Why do you need that?

The set didn't come with it and the folks at the warehouse where it was being stored didn't know of its whereabouts.

The parameters rarely changed year to year in the Mits line. You're probably safe assuming they have not changed, but always best to try new values out first, after very carefully recording the original values before changing any of them.

Interesting; I'll have to look into that. When you fixed red push on your newer model, did it use the same parameters as the older model in the PDF guide?

[TechGeek]

Re: Coolant Leak on Mitsubishi WS-A65 CRT RPTV

white wire goes down into the transformer, you cant desolder it - from that end anyway.
it runs at several KV so dont cut it - it's the focus or grid wire.

it's actually an anode wire; runs at over 15,000VDC(from what I know)

[stj]

Re: Coolant Leak on Mitsubishi WS-A65 CRT RPTV

no, the anode's are unplugged in that foto - there is a splitter in the foto on the side of the lopt.

[SurrealMustard]

clean components

Got the mainboard (along with several other cruddy computer motherboards we had hanging around the house) cleaned using the dishwasher yesterday. Just ran a "Quick Rinse" with no detergent. The results were excellent on the motherboards and decent on the mainboard for the Mitsubishi (although it could've been positioned better and the smell left something to be desired). I dried off the bulk of the water with the air compressor, then a dryer, and finally left everything that was washed sitting outside in the sun for a few hours. If there was any errant coolant left anywhere on that mainboard, it is probably as good as gone by this point.

Now, all that's left to do is to wait for the power supply board to come in and get everything installed and then (hopefully) get some Xbox 360 going on this thing .

[SurrealMustard]

Success

The repair was a success! The power board took a few more days than it should have to come in because the seller forgot to ship it, but it did finally get here yesterday. I got it installed right away and hooked up and everything is working great now! Check out the fresh photos attached to this post; the proof is in the pudding. Now all that's left to do is to find a faceplate for this thing. Even without any kind of "red push" fix or formal calibration outside of what can be done in the user menu and the the VSM fix, this thing is looking fantastic.

A YouTube v-log detailing the whole process is in the works, but for now, check out the photos. The first one is a little overexposed, but the second one really shows the contrast ratio.

[mrbob84]

Re: Coolant Leak on Mitsubishi WS-A65 CRT RPTV

Awesome! When are you gonna have me over and play me a movie?



PS - Don't remember - have your optics been cleaned yet?

[SurrealMustard]

videos!

Awesome! When are you gonna have me over and play me a movie?

That and Xbox 360. Or some NES if you're old school. Say, do you think the NES Zapper would work on these HDReady models or would there be too much lag introduced by the 480i>480p upscaling process?

[dick_barton]

Re: Coolant Leak on Mitsubishi WS-A65 CRT RPTV

Glad you got there in the end.

[mrbob84]

Re: Coolant Leak on Mitsubishi WS-A65 CRT RPTV

.

[mrbob84]

Re: videos!

That and Xbox 360. Or some NES if you're old school. Say, do you think the NES Zapper would work on these HDReady models or would there be too much lag introduced by the 480i>480p upscaling process?

Try it and see. I am not a gamer.

[SurrealMustard]

Zappers and fixed leaks

Try it and see. I am not a gamer.

I'll have to try it. Once I can borrow an NES, a working Zapper, and a copy of Duck Hunt, we will find out once and for all. As for the Mit, I was able to clear up the fogginess. It looked like a little bit of the leaked coolant that hadn't rolled down to the board had evaporated in the optics. After getting that cleaned out, it appears to be working properly again; I'm just going to wait a couple of days to make sure that no more leaks out and wrecks another board. It seems like they designed those covers to collect leaks, but they're mounted so close to the front of the set that the coolant drips right behind them. I'll have to see if there's anything that can be rigged up to extend the existing shroud so that it can actually do its job of catching any errant drops of coolant that may drip down from any of those tubes in the future.

[mrbob84]

Re: Coolant Leak on Mitsubishi WS-A65 CRT RPTV

Those metal covers were not designed to stop the leaks, they are metal and IMHO are for shielding.

Mit eventually designed plastic collection bowls under the guns, but the earlier ones didn't have that.

I usually get a plastic sheet like a separator for a binder and rig it up to shed the coolant from over the boards. Allow a lot of room for ventilation from any heat sinks on the board, but a coolant shed is all you need, with its lowest point being away from the boards, so any drips will go onto the wood cabinet floor. Anchor them with tie wraps.

[SurrealMustard]

more coolant!

Preventative maintenance is going to have to be put on hold for now, as a new development in the story today leads me to believe that this thing is not yet done leaking.

After cleaning the bottom of that lens, the (red) picture fogged up again after about an hour of viewing. I took the lens off and saw the fog on the bottom, same as before, so I thought I'd get the dryer out and see if whatever leftover coolant that was evaporating and fogging up the lens could be dried out. What I found was that by doing so, I was able to isolate the source of the leak (or at least the main one, if there are multiple sources) because I could actually see the coolant slowly bubble up and out of it with the application of heat. It probably should've been obvious, given the trajectory of the stains from the previously leaked coolant, but there's no doubt now as to where it is primarily coming from. The question, at this point, is how to stop it. Could I just close that hole with superglue and hope that the coolant doesn't leak out somewhere else or is there a better approach?

[mrbob84]

Re: Coolant Leak on Mitsubishi WS-A65 CRT RPTV

Wow, I have never before seen an actual leak point, even tho I have dealt with this issue on countless occasions.

The coolant not only leaked, but corroded the plate as it followed gravity down.

Unless you want to remove the gun, sit it bolt upright, remove the red screws and gently lift off the coolant cover and remedy the leak - which is a very dicey project, not for the faint of heart - I would try super glue from the outside, yes.

Or this new stuff called 5 second bond might be even better. It cures using UV light coming from a small lamp that comes with it. It's got the same properties as what the dentist uses on our teeth. After curing it for 15-20 seconds it will hard as rock and you can then test it out again by heating the whole thing up again. However I don't think the light will go deep enough to do its curing of the plate unless you prepare the surface really well. The light will not go down into the leak because it's all black in there. Only the surface that's exposed to the UV light will have any chance of being cured properly. And we don't know if mixing with the actual coolant itself will compromise the glue's ability to cure properly. As such you should only do the operation after you have turned the set off and have allowed the coolant to get sucked back inside the crack by the gun going cold again. And clean that crack as well as you can, in prep for the glue.


Or you can heat and heat and heat it getting the entire gun hot, allowing more and more of the coolant to seep out. Ultimately it will probably stop oozing forth, as air will have taken its place inside the coolant chamber and no more coolant will be in that area. Usually by the time I see this issue, the coolant has stopped leaking a long time ago. Sometimes the affected area on the board is blue-green with corrosion, sometimes it has been so long since it leaked that the leg of a resistor has been eaten away till it does not have any metal conducting in it anymore and the unit starts doing wacky, unpredictable things. Which it does anyway anytime that coolant gets under a flat pack IC, causing partial conductance between many of its legs.

However if the amount that escaped is too much, it will be visible in the light path. I once had one that leaked out a full 1/3 of the coolant, thus showing only 2/3 of the pic after that. This seems to be sufficiently low on the gun that the air gap will not be within the light path. You really dodged a bullet here. It could just as easily have been on the lower end of that gun face.

It won't stop, tho, until it equalizes the pressure from inside where it's heated every time it's turned on, to the outside. That will be where the level of the coolant will be at the same height as the leak position.

[SurrealMustard]

plan of action

Wow, I have never before seen an actual leak point, even tho I have dealt with this issue on countless occasions.

The coolant not only leaked, but corroded the plate as it followed gravity down.

Unless you want to remove the gun, sit it bolt upright, remove the red screws and gently lift off the coolant cover and remedy the leak - which is a very dicey project, not for the faint of heart - I would try super glue from the outside, yes.

Or this new stuff called 5 second bond might be even better. It cures using UV light coming from a small lamp that comes with it. It's got the same properties as what the dentist uses on our teeth. After curing it for 15-20 seconds it will hard as rock and you can then test it out again by heating the whole thing up again. However I don't think the light will go deep enough to do its curing of the plate unless you prepare the surface really well. The light will not go down into the leak because it's all black in there. Only the surface that's exposed to the UV light will have any chance of being cured properly. And we don't know if mixing with the actual coolant itself will compromise the glue's ability to cure properly. As such you should only do the operation after you have turned the set off and have allowed the coolant to get sucked back inside the crack by the gun going cold again. And clean that crack as well as you can, in prep for the glue.


Or you can heat and heat and heat it getting the entire gun hot, allowing more and more of the coolant to seep out. Ultimately it will probably stop oozing forth, as air will have taken its place inside the coolant chamber and no more coolant will be in that area. Usually by the time I see this issue, the coolant has stopped leaking a long time ago. Sometimes the affected area on the board is blue-green with corrosion, sometimes it has been so long since it leaked that the leg of a resistor has been eaten away till it does not have any metal conducting in it anymore and the unit starts doing wacky, unpredictable things. Which it does anyway anytime that coolant gets under a flat pack IC, causing partial conductance between many of its legs.

However if the amount that escaped is too much, it will be visible in the light path. I once had one that leaked out a full 1/3 of the coolant, thus showing only 2/3 of the pic after that. This seems to be sufficiently low on the gun that the air gap will not be within the light path. You really dodged a bullet here. It could just as easily have been on the lower end of that gun face.

It won't stop, tho, until it equalizes the pressure from inside where it's heated every time it's turned on, to the outside. That will be where the level of the coolant will be at the same height as the leak position.

Good call. I will try that and report back with the results.

It's interesting, because in reading about this problem, folks usually end up with this on the green or blue. I haven't checked the blue yet (although it would probably be a good idea to do so while I'm in there), but that plate is perfectly clean under the green lens, so it looks like this set is only leaking under the red. I guess somebody has to deal with the unusual problems now and then, but it's probably a good thing that it took out the power board instead of the mainboard or signal boards, because those would've likely been much more expensive to replace.

[mrbob84]

Re: Coolant Leak on Mitsubishi WS-A65 CRT RPTV

If available at all. I am surprised as all get out that you found what you found!

If you are not having any problems with the blue, I would not remove its lens barrel. Usually any coolant leaks happen a lot sooner than now, your red one is really an anomaly. Best to leave well enough alone, I think.

Also, remember that anytime you remove and then put back any of the lens barrels, they don't go back EXACTLY where they were before, they require reconvergence of the cross hairs, or main pictures. Of course since you have already removed the red and green, you'll need reconvergence anyway whether you remove the blue or not, so I guess you may as well.

Be sure each and every lens barrel removed goes back in oriented EXACTLY the direction it was before. Don't get them 90 or 180 degrees off from where they were before or you'll have to do your entire convergence paradigm over again. Not just the cross hairs.

And don't get the lens barrels mixed up. Each one has its own optical/mechanical focus setting, independent from any of the others. Switching them around will necessitate refocusing manually on each, for which if needed I recommend the Cantilever Technique (look it up on www.youtube.com at my channel, mrbobbigscreen). See this also if you simply distrust the factory optical focus settings. I would. Using the Cantilever Technique you can ferret out whether each of the lens barrels is in focus or not, WITHOUT changing what position the focusing is in on that particular barrel. Whenever I do a calibration I usually find 2 of the 3 lens barrels out of focus out of the box, straight from the factory. Regardless of brand, the only exception being Sony. I don't stop in my calibrations until your set has razor precision focusing and convergence. I delight in then sitting back and studying the grain if the film they used to shoot the movie I am watching.

If you indeed do refocus any of the lenses, you will definitely then need to do a complete 72 point reconvergence, as changing the optical focusing changes the size of the pic itself. If you want to know the personality of the Mit convergence system vs. say, the Pioneer convergence system, give me a call. I do phone coaching on that and many other facets of the CRT RPTV phenomenon. Any Pioneer CRT RPTV owners out there, you might want to give me a call if you've tried to reconverge your 72 points and have not been able to get them back to efficacy. The Pioneers are some of the most unpredictable of all the brand personalities for convergence. Took me doing cals on them for years to master it.

If you want to know more about CRT RPTVs, look up Don't Dump your CRT RPTV! at www.avsforum.com. That thread was started by me in 2006 and is still going strong. It hit the million view mark a year or 2 ago. The info you'll find there is truly immense, not just from me but also from many many many other contributors.

If you want to reach me directly, google mr bob and home theater or send me an email to: bob at imageperfection dot com.

[SurrealMustard]

dryer, glue, and mechanical focus.

Well, I managed to relieve (what looks to be) the rest of the pressure last night using a dryer and got some glue in there after the rest of the excess bled out and it had cooled off a bit (there wasn't too much more anyway). Now it is time to wait for the glue to dry before doing one more stress test with the dryer to see if it is going to leak anymore.

Be sure each and every lens barrel removed goes back in oriented EXACTLY the direction it was before. Don't get them 90 or 180 degrees off from where they were before or you'll have to do your entire convergence paradigm over again. Not just the cross hairs.

And don't get the lens barrels mixed up. Each one has its own optical/mechanical focus setting, independent from any of the others.

This model makes it pretty easy because each lens has a sticker corresponding to its color on the front side, so not only is it easy to know which tube each lens belongs on, getting their orientation right is simple as long as you remember that the side with the sticker faces the front.

Also, the focus, surprisingly enough, is actually relatively close on both the green and the red in this one. It's just the blue that could use some minor touch-up.

If you want to know more about CRT RPTVs, look up Don't Dump your CRT RPTV! at www.avsforum.com. That thread was started by me in 2006 and is still going strong. It hit the million view mark a year or 2 ago. The info you'll find there is truly immense, not just from me but also from many many many other contributors.

It's a great resource to search for information, but good luck posting or getting anyone to reply to your posts now because nobody can get into their accounts on that site anymore thanks to the administratively-challenged administration.

[SurrealMustard]

the leaks don't stop

Just to follow up on this, (because I hate to leave a good story hanging) I am having a bit of trouble getting a good seal. Using the dryer method, I found that the big opening with the rubber immediately to the right of that little hole is the next weakest link and coolant will slowly leak out of it, even after sealing it up with superglue (Loctite, which I know can stand up to liquid pressure because I've used it in the shower and it is still holding up well months later). Interestingly enough, even though the surface doesn't get nearly as hot in normal operation, it actually summons the coolant leak much more easily than the dryer can, and with the leak slowed to the point where it no longer runs down onto the lens to fog it up (or worse, the electronics below), it becomes easier to test.

However, I cannot help but fear that it eventually will leak further down and cause problems if the seal can't be perfected. For now, I'll just run the set for an hour or so, keep an eye on where it leaks, clean the area, apply superglue, and repeat.

[mrbob84]

Re: Coolant Leak on Mitsubishi WS-A65 CRT RPTV

We are in uncharted territory here because I have never seen this done. It's an excellent idea though. I suspect that when enough fluid has leaked out it will level off and not leak anymore despite how much pressure is involved.

I'm sure this has happened many times to many sets and will not affect the picture to any noticeable degree if only a small amount has leaked out. I typically see a small air bubble at the top of most coolant chambers of the big expensive ceiling projectors. It's never enough to affect the look of the picture.


If you want to get razor precision on your optical focus for each lens barrel, study my video on YouTube about the Cantilever Technique. My channel is mrBobbigscreen.

Optical focusing should always be done on a 480 image, not a 1080 image. That allows you to zoom in on the actual scan lines used on a grid rather than a picture. This delivers the finest focusing available. You focus on the shadow between two scan lines of a horizontal grid line.

Blue is a lot harder to see than the red and green in the focusing operation, so keep your room completely dead black for that operation, no lights on anywhere in the room.

On the electrostatic focusing, tightening the blue as much as possible can diminish the amount of blue in the grayscale, so you have to be careful. I would usually leave the electronic blue alone if your gray scale is correct, giving attention only to the optical focusing of the blue. Having the blue electrostatic focusing at the focus block slightly defocused gives you a brighter blue in your picture and that is what the factory usually does out of the box, in CRT tech. It is standard operating procedure for the big expensive ceiling projectors. I would leave the blue focusing trim pot on the focus block completely alone, and unchanged from factory settings.

[SurrealMustard]

More leaks. From the blue (and possibly green) this time

Just to follow up on this, the superglue held for about a year before enough coolant leaked out in that area onto the lens again, fogging it up. This time, I decided to bring out the big guns and used JB Weld to seal things up. Being the "World's Strongest Bond," if that stuff can't keep the coolant from leaking out, then I don't know what would. At any rate, the red seems to be working fine again for now.

Unfortunately, the same can't be said for the blue (and possibly the green). I ran the set for a while after having finally sealed off the red leak for good, only to have the video blank out on me one afternoon. Closer inspection revealed that coolant had dripped down from the blue tube and leaked onto the signal board, as shown in the annotated pictures. After having seen this, I disconnected power (having learned my lesson last time) and performed a preliminary cleaning of the coolant the following morning. I then plugged in and powered on to ensure that there was no permanent damage. Thankfully, it fired right up and displayed a proper picture on-screen.

Around the time when I was discovering this new coolant leak, I took a closer look at where it may have come from and was able to trace its path. Apparently, this leak took the more "typical" approach and dripped down the tube, following the red cable before eventually forming a drop big enough to drip down. The same thing may have also happened with the green as well. It's hard to see in the pictures, since they were taken after I cleaned up, but hopefully my annotations accurately convey the approximate path of the coolant leak, at least for the blue tube.

At this point, I'll probably clean up what I can, but my question is if there are any good strategies for mitigating this in the future. If I had known what I know now at the beginning of this whole saga, I would've given this thing up, but since I've got so many hours of my time, a $35 power supply board, and a good amount of JB Weld invested, I figured that I may as well finish the job and be done with this thing. As such, any tips are greatly appreciated.