I went to plug in my Speed Rumbler tonight, and the monitor has no pic. I can hear the game and play it, but no pic. What could it be. I honestly am scared to even mess with monitors. From the war stories I've heard, it gives me the creeps to even try and mess with one. Any ideas on what it might be?
I read about "monitor cap kits" for a little over 2.5 years before I actually attempted one myself. I did a lot of extensive reading about discharging monitors and overall watching other techs do it (that helps in some ways, but doesn't in others). half the battle is learning how to discharge, and having the proper tools for doing it is the other half (and execution of course).
I built my own discharge tool, it's an alligator clip that came from a set I bought at Radio Shack and a redundant Craftsman flathead screwdriver I didn't really need for anything else. I cut one clip off, stripped the wire pretty long, wrapped it around the base of the flathead a few times, and wrapped it in electrical tape. now I have a discharge tool, made essentially from pretty common items.
points you need to consider: some monitors can kind of discharge themselves, others cannot. some keep pretty huge charges in the neckboard transistors, others do not. I hear about guys working on these ancient monitors on here all the time though, so I don't classify them as "volatile and dangerous" like Hantarex Polos.
if you want to know anything about discharging, you can find a wealth of information about working with CRTs on youtube or within a few google searches.
working on them is fairly basic. like a cap kit, all you're doing is removing old components and installing new ones. how you go about doing that is another story, but I've probably capped about 12 monitors now, the only ones I ever had any issues with were those Sanyo EZs, and that's because I had a bunch of co-workers around talking to me and distracting me.

I largely did those without thinking at all... you'll know you fucked up when you have a cap left over, or a "missing" one.
all in all, very easy stuff. I've swapped neck components and replaced flybacks, and I guess to my credit I resurrected a blown-up K7000.
I generally read various KLOV threads that look interesting in my spare time to pick up worthless information that can prove useful for when I run into a similar problem down the road.