Got a call that a TV had started making a sizzling noise and let out some magic smoke. Figured I’d take a look and just see if it was an easy fix. To get started, I removed the screws holding on the back cover to get a look inside.

There were three boards in this TV. One for power, one for video and sound, and the third was a small board for the volume/channel buttons to the side of the enclosure.

The most plausible reason was something on the power board burnt up. Very common for electrolytic capacitors to blow and take out the whole TV.

First thing you see if the large burn mark were the PCB had been burnt. Seems the transformer’s primary side had a solder joint that began to arc, which snowballed into enough heat to burn the fiberglass PCB. (below left)

Looking for other components that could have failed along with the arcing solder joint, in the photo on the left (below right), you see a electrolytic capacitor with a little black dot. It blew it’s top and will also need to be replaced.

Testing the primary side of the transform, I see it had continuity, which is good, because now I won’t need to rewind it with new magnet wire. And a new 35v, 1000uF capacitor which easy to replace.

After scraping out most of the burnt PCB, I was able to solder in a small piece of silver copper wire to connect the pin the trace to replace the damaged trace.

Before putting the back cover on, I stood the TV upright and connected the power cable. It seemed to be fine with just being plugged into wall power, so I pushed the power button. And it popped on and booted up. I connected something to the HDMI port to give it something to show on the screen and let it run for a few hours. No issues. Put the cover back on and put it back in place.

Thanks for following along, it was fun to attempt a TV repair, and I look forward to attempt more repairs. For some recent project, check out the posts below!