LX200 Classic Base Check

[haitch]

At last I've found a thread with photos of the important capacitors to replace! I picked up a 12" classic a couple of weeks ago only really paid the cost of the OTA so mount was a bonus anyway turned it on and poof went the handset capacitor with a little jet of smoke shooting out from around the handset cable. I've actually managed to fix the ribbon connector with wire glue (it blew the first 4 threads on the left which were common plus the bottom 3 buttons). I stuck tape over the burnt out area, scraped a little of the green coating off with the blunt edge of a Stanley blade and painted the new lines in across the tape. It took several attempts but the secret turned out to be to have the tape crossing the lines at a shallow angle and painting the lines also away at angle so that it gave me a bit more room between the lines. I meant to take photos but forgot and now don't want to open it back up and risk disturbing something so sorry you'll have to put up with my confusing descriptions.

[E Sully]

It's good to hear you were able to save the handset. That ribbon cable is the most difficult capacitor problem to recover from.
Hope the scope brings you many years of use.

[astrogulp]

Shearch about a good tv repair technicans for substitution condensers .I m technics but live in italy...

[hendric]

E Sully,
I think your pictures for the motor capacitors has one facing the wrong way. If you look at your RA picture, you have the negative side of the electrolytic facing the potentiometers. The DEC picture has the negative side facing the 3 pin test header. That way is incorrect. Based on the schematics at lx200classic.com pins 5 & 6 are grounds and pin 4 is 18 V. You can verify this by ohming out pins 5&6, they are connected to ground and will show a short when measured.

I put in tantalum 50V caps and didn't catch it right away because they work for a few seconds (without smoking) and then short out (after reassembly). You might be lucky with electrolytics for a while reverse biasing them, but eventually they'll go out too.

[E Sully]

Thanks for the info. I will correct that.