Cap Kit Installation - Television Repair Shop?

paulliadis

Well-known member
Joined
Sep 18, 2010
Messages
1,715
Reaction score
65
Location
Bellefonte, Pennsylvania
I'm thinking my Donkey Kong Junior needs a cap kit. It has very minor foldover on the left side. I can actually correct it after turning the game on by shrinking the screen using the vertical adjustment and then expanding it. This is obviously not normal and will need corrected at some point.

So, the cap kit installation scares the crap out of me. A little because of the shock risk, but more because of my soldering inexperience. My experience is this: my wife bought me a soldering iron for Father's Day (at my request) at it's still in it's original packaging. I hope to learn to solder, just not sure if this should be my first project.

There are no known arcade repair shops in my area (central PA). Just contemplating my options. Has anybody out there taken their monitor to a television repair shop? Happy with the results?

Thanks,
Paul
 
hate to say it but if you plan on doing any repairs to a arcade game in the future you might want to start here.
One downfall is you have a monitor that takes a little longer to take out of the frame than most.
The good side is this it's easy to do a cap kit on these chassis all the spots are labled on the underside. and usually a 9 dollar kit will fix it rather than a 100buck repair bill for doing the same thing.

You can find vids all over on how to do it. It's pretty basic and straight forward. just watch where things unplug when you take it out and buy a good soldering pencil and solder sucker.

"you Can Do it"
 
cap kits are very easy to do once you get comfortable with the whole concept. half the battle is discharging the tube anode, the other half is getting a Sanyo EZ apart. very absurd design.. lots of wires and connectors.

installing the kit itself is pretty straightforward though. you'll get a sheet of paper with the kit telling what every cap is in the kit, and then another part that tells you which capacitance/voltage values go to which location. I've gotten a little carried away with the EZs... sometimes I forget to mark off which caps I've installed, and even placed caps in the wrong locations (doh). in 3 cases, I was heavily distracted by other people around me, so if you're easily distracted, you better find a quiet place to do surgery at. :)

make note of the cap polarity... the EZ's polarized cap locations on the board are labeled which side is the negative side. the negative side of the cap is the one with the line on it.

I'd look for videos on how to do these so you get a better idea of what you're doing.
 
You should also consider finding a fellow klover nearby..pretty sure there are quite a few in Penn. That way you can make a new friend and maybe someone to learn from.
 
Good point

"if you plan on doing any repairs to a arcade game in the future you might want to start here"

That's a good point. I have watched the videos on the internet and read articles about cap kits, but still a bit nervous.

I'll most likely buy a "learn how to solder" project kit before I start work on my monitor, to get a little practice at least.

Paul
 
Find a crap chassis or something to practice soldering on. Sloppy would still work ok, but a little practice would really help and maybe prevent you from lifting a trace or something.
 
A good way to learn to solder is find a curbside TV or radio on trash day and buy a few caps from the local Radio Shack and practice on that. Don't let a working monitor be your first crack at soldering.
 
A bit of advise to those who have no experience:

If you "work" on the monitor and screw it up, it's gonna cost you more to have an experienced tech fix it. Sometimes what was a simple problem can turn into multiple problems.

There should be some KLOV forum members in Pa that could do the work. Our own forum member Todd Tuckey of TNT Amusements in Southampton could help.

http://www.tntamusements.com/

One of our parts suppliers, Competitive Products is in Tullytown:

http://www.competitiveproducts.com/contact.php

Look in your local telephone directory Yellow Pages under "Amusement Devices" for a local game operator who could do your monitor repairs.
 
i was in the same boat and i capped a vector monitor, when i started i had never soldered anything before but i did and i plan to do it again :)
 
Back
Top Bottom