My new shop TV and DIY Ceiling mount

ovilla · Jul 22, 2014

My new shop TV and DIY Ceiling mount + How to Fix TV's!

Paid $50 for this "dead" 40 Samsung 1080P that took less than $5 in Radio Shack parts to fix. Anyway, the picture looks a hell of a lot better than my old 32" Sony tube monster that sat on top of my upright freezer. Plus this one swivels so I can see it from anywhere in the garage or while working on something on my bench.

Anyway I wanted to make my own ceiling mount, since everything I saw online or in stores was crazy expensive and looked kind of weak too. I used 1.5" black gas pipe, bolted to a pipe flange in the garage attic (for my 360 swivel). The rest was made with unistrut that I had laying around, which I might paint black later on, when I get ready to run all the wires through the pipe. I know it's a bit bulky but I have infinite adjustability for horizontal leveling and up/down swivel movement too.

I ran a 50' HDMI cable from the DVR in my basement so I can watch recorded shows using an RF universal MX-350 remote. I also have a PS3 hooked up for blurays and Netflix. It's so nice to finally have HD in the shop. Formula 1 and Nascar finally have a pic worthy of the sound I'm getting in the garage.

ovilla · Jul 22, 2014

volleyball · Jul 22, 2014

So you have more in the mount than the tv? It looks like the reel is in front of the tv. Won't that be in the way? Can a swinging tool crash the screen?

ovilla · Jul 22, 2014

The pics above are a bit deceiving. I have 10' ceilings so the top of the tv is about 6" below the bottom of the hose reel so it doesn't block any of the view from the tv. I did think about moving the air hose reel but it's in a perfect spot, next to my BendPak and close to the bench.

srmofo · Jul 22, 2014

volleyball said:
So you have more in the mount than the tv? It looks like the reel is in front of the tv. Won't that be in the way? Can a swinging tool crash the screen?

First time someone trips over the hose, and that thing auto rewinds, that screen is toast.

BTW pipe Unions make great swivels. My shop fan is mounted on one and it allows me to quickly change directions without tools. The threads on yours probably do the same thing but my fan wants to unscrew everything from the vibrations

volleyball · Jul 22, 2014

What is most amazing is that radio shack had the parts. Not much electronics left. I bought a set of caps to fix a monitor and they lasted less than a year.

coljar · Jul 22, 2014

You helped me with a solution to mounting my flat screen, because I haven't seen a store bought mount that would work for my situation. Tell us what you did to fix that flat screen. I'm sure I'm not the only one who wants to know.

ovilla · Jul 22, 2014

It's mostly just me in the shop and I'm pretty careful with the air hose reel, so I never let it go flying back in (especially since I always have cars under and on the lift). This reel is only used by me. I doubt my neighbors even know how to plug anything into it. I've got another hookup over by the garage door, which is where the compressor lives. That's the one that the kids and neighbors use to air up bikes.

I also have two other flat screens that I've saved from the landfill (a 46" and a 52"), both fully operational now. You'd be amazed at how many folks just give up on trying to fix their old tv's.

Beemer533 · Jul 22, 2014

I love uni-strut! Nice mount :thumbup:

ovilla · Jul 22, 2014

Lots of tv's just need capacitors (Radio Shack or shopjimmy.com) or an IC chip (eBay) swapped out. Worst case you can buy all the parts you need to replace any component on the Y board or PSB, or just buy a full replacement board if you don't have a soldering station. You just need a good fluke or other device that can measure capacitance so you're not guessing what to replace on a board. With the right tools you can pretty much fix any of this stuff. I've actually been fixing more iPhones than I can count lately. Seems like teenagers are extremely rough with their phones. By the way iPhone parts are crazy cheap and very simple to swap out.

Beemer533 · Jul 22, 2014

ovilla said:
It's mostly just me in the shop and I'm pretty careful with the air hose reel, so I never let it go flying back in (especially since I always have cars under and on the lift). This reel is only used by me. I doubt my neighbors even know how to plug anything into it. I've got another hookup over by the garage door, which is where the compressor lives. That's the one that the kids and neighbors use to air up bikes.

I also have two other flat screens that I've saved from the landfill (a 46" and a 52"), both fully operational now. You'd be amazed at how many folks just give up on trying to fix their old tv's.

I was wandering through the high bay at my work last year, when I spotted 3 NEC 21.5" monitors sitting by the overhead door for the dumpster..

Snagged them all, did some googleing and found a $12 repair kit on amazon for a common power supply issue.. $36 and 3 hours work and I had 3 perfectly operating monitors..

It does seem like everything is throwaway these days.. I remember our first TV was a Sony trinitron with the 13 pushbuttons for the channels on the front. That thing was still going strong after 20 years. Those days are long gone it seems, especially when talking about electronics..

ovilla · Jul 22, 2014

Stay away from tv's with broken screens. The price of even a small 32" screen is several hundred dollars. Having said that, keep in mind that a nice flat screen TV with a broken screen WAS working prior to the broken screen and all of the internal parts are still good. Lots of times folks are dumping these and they'll have most of the parts you'll need to fix another tv, that's the same size, slightly smaller or bigger - from the same MFG. I paid $25 for my 52" and $20 for the 46". Both needed less than $10 in parts. I had a buddy that was going to throw out a flat screen that had vertical lines on it, which turned out to be a loose connection. Don't give up on your expensive electronics. Open them up and at least have a look.

ovilla · Jul 22, 2014

If your tv doesn't power up at all (I.e. No lights or sounds) look for an internal glass fuse and do a quick continuity check on it - or just swap it out. Quite often it's this fuse or the internal ($3) thermal fuse under the transformer that has blown. All you need is a soldering gun to swap out the thermal. Heck you can even leave the factory installed thermal fuse in place and just solder a new one to the board - which will now take it's place. It's easier to take the old one out and take it with you so you can make sure you get an identical replacement.

Bad capacitors (aka caps) will typically look bloated (like a bloated beer can) or exhibit electrical leakage which means that they have black or brown residue on the top of the cap (look for a black plus sign on top of a bad cap). The top surface of a good cap will be flat and you'll see a nice clean "+" indentation on it. Sometimes the caps look perfectly fine but they are no longer within their nominal 10% range. Every cap has a microfarad number and temp listed on it. A 1000 microfarad cap should read within 10% of it's stated value of 1000. If it isn't, then swap it out with a good one of the same microfarad rating and temp rating (also listed on the cap). The voltage will also be noted on your cap. When swapping out your cap, you can replace it with one that has the same or slightly higher voltage rating (like using a 16 volt instead of a 10volt). Here's some pics for you to check out.

nine4gmc · Jul 22, 2014

Thanks for the schooling Ovilla!! I see broken TV's all the time but passed on them, now I may give them a crack and see what may be the problem. Your tv mount looks great too, love the versatility!

shawhite · Jul 22, 2014

The reel in front of the TV would drive me nuts. Mount looks great.

smokem2020 · Jul 22, 2014

My 50 " plasma Samsun has horizontal lines. I retired it to the garage. I had it apart but didnt see anything loose. Still sort if works. Maybe I need to look at it again.

southalabama · Jul 22, 2014

I admire men that can fix TVs. My dad built our first color tv. It was a heath kit.

He salvages electronics all the time by changing fuses and capacitors. Then again he went thru the USAF electronics school before I was born and then did 30 plus at AT&T.

ovilla · Jul 22, 2014

Always ask what's wrong with a "dead" tv. If they say that the front power light comes on, blinks, or the tv keeps cutting out, turns off on its own, or comes on after it's been plugged in for X number of hours/days, it more than likely just needs replacement caps. If no power light comes on at all, then it's more than likely 2 or more caps that need replacing.

When you open it up, look for and swap out any bloated caps or those with the plus sign. Make sure to look at the orientation of your caps. The stripe on one side of the cap is the negative side (-). Your new cap must go in the same orientation as your old one. I know some of you might not want to try soldering but you can definitely take the back of your tv apart with a #2 screwdriver, look for any sign of bad caps, and then take a pic before you disconnect all cables going to the bad board, which you can then take to a tv repair place and have them desolder and solder on your new caps. You can even bring them the part (from Radio Shack, shopjimmy.com, amazon, etc.) and then just pay them to do the sodlering for you.

Hair dryer test
If all the caps look fine, turn on the tv (or at least try to turn it on every 5 or so minutes while performing this test). Grab a heat gun (or any hair dryer) and set it on hot and swirl the hot air around the caps - about 2" away from the caps (and keep swirling the the air around, making little 1-2" circles around the caps). Stay on one board until you've heated each area of caps for 5-10 min, then move on to other sections or boards. What you're doing is helping the good looking cap to come up to its operating temp. If your tv then comes on and works fine - while it's still plugged in and your caps are nice and warm now - but won't come on later on without the use of your hair dryer, you've found the good looking BUT bad caps. Replace all the caps that you last heated with air. They are really cheap so replace them all, starting with the big caps first (1000 microfarad or higher). Just swap one or two and plug everything back in and turn on your tv so you can see if that solved your issue.

Note: The hair dryer test also works on bad caps that are visibly bad. Take off the back of the tv, plug it in and attempt to turn it on, while heating the area of the bad caps. If the caps haven't leaked everything out just yet, your tv set will come on for an hour or so.

PLEASE make sure you disconnect all power and cables from the board that you are doing any soldering on. The board should be totally on its own and on your bench so you can solder on it. Failure to do this will result in possible damage to the board that you are working on or to any other board that's connected to it.

Soldering station
All you need is a basic 40w or 60W set up. You can find these at Radio shack for about $20-$30 for a nice station with a damp sponge holder, which will allow you to easily swipe and clean the tip of your soldering iron. Check out youtube for how to use a soldering iron.

ovilla · Jul 22, 2014

I'm ex-military too (USAF) but actually learned everything I know about electronics from a class I took in high school. I remember laughing at my teacher when he made a light glow by heating a board with a hair dryer. You just don't forget these things. Add in years spent installing stereos and fixing blown amplifiers for friends and that's how we get to fixing modern day electronics. Hasn't really changed that much. Such a shame that they don't offer these courses in high school anymore.

volleyball · Jul 22, 2014

The end result has to be worth it, a 720 p tv may not be worth more than a few minutes of your time.
Same with most things with a crt.
Lots of time you want a new machine because of a new feature.
A lot of recyclers resell these broken electronics so many are getting fixed

mtmgtz · Jul 22, 2014

If you're looking for lcd/plasma TV mounts, Monoprice is a great place. I've purchased around 10 mounts from them and they've all worked pretty well. Much, much cheaper than best buy or wal-mart or whatever.

Here are some ceiling mounts:
http://www.monoprice.com/Category?c_id=109&cp_id=10828&cs_id=1082814

ovilla · Jul 22, 2014

Another important tip!!! Always ask for the model number so you can look up the tv's specs. You'd be surprised at how many old plasma tv's are only 720P (even 40" and 50") or don't have an HDMI input or audio output (for your old school RCA Jack A/V receiver in your garage).

Then again if you're still rocking an old tube tv, a new 720P will look a little better and take up less room. Just keep in mind that the new tv may also need external speakers to be heard in your big garage space.

coljar · Jul 22, 2014

Thanks for the information. I learned something new. I know this thread is about your mount, but I think you may have got some of us glancing around as we drive through our neighborhoods on trash night. Anything else you think of that might be helpful would be most appreciated. I've subscribed and printed this off.

ovilla · Jul 23, 2014

I probably should have called this thread "Restoring a vintage LCD". Anyway, just glad to be able to contribute to our great site here. Many of you have helped me over the years so I'm happy to share what I can.

For those asking about the mount, here's a list of the parts I used, This mount is ridiculously strong and can easily be used for an even bigger tv, like a 60" or even a 70". If you are wanting even more overkill, go with the bigger 12 gauge unistrut.

14 gauge unistrut (also known as 13/16"). Note that this only comes in 10' pieces. Just take it to the Tool Rental section of Home Depot and ask if you can borrow a hack saw, since most stores don't have any way of cutting this for you. This way you can fit it in your car for the ride home.

1-1/2 unistrut pipe hangers (6 ea)

1-1/2" Black pipe (4' long). Pipe only comes in 10', 3', or smaller pieces but Home Depot will cut a 10' piece into as many pieces as needed for you, with their very efficient pipe cutting machine.

1-1/2" Galvanized pipe flange and a set of four 5/16" lag bolts that are 2 to 3" long (dependent on what you are anchoring your flange to).

3/8" bolts, locking washers, washers, and nuts for joining the unistrut together.

The unistrut on the back of the tv extends just an inch past the tv's vertical mounting points. I just drilled holes small enough to fit the mounting bolts needed for the tv. All other pieces of unistrut were cut to 6" lengths.

The horizontal black pipe was cut to 16" so that it extended about 4" past the vertical unistrut, on each side. Cut yours to the size needed for you tv.

Note: if you don't need to swivel your tv down, just cut two horizontal unistrut pieces and buy two 1-1/2 unistrut pipe hangers and cut the black pipe to the length you need. That's it!

Flange positioning
Anchor your flange, insert your black pipe from underneath and then tighten your pipe as far as it will tighten. Now mount your tv on the pipe in the right most (fully tightened) position that you will ever swivel too. This will allow for the most threads that you can possibly get into your flange since your threaded pipe end is angled and won't allow your pipe to go fully through the flange.

volleyball · Jul 23, 2014

I bought a full articulating wall mount for my home tv that is good for 120 lbs for about $45. How does the cost of all the pieces compare?
If you have the stuff lying around and just need a few small thing but if you have to buy everything and then assemble, can you justify it?
What you did looks nice and would work better away from the wall as mine only goes 2 feet from the wall so that might make it worth doing.

ovilla · Jul 23, 2014

Re: My new shop TV and DIY Ceiling mount + How to Fix TV's!

I needed something that could swivel since the tv is located above a full upright freezer, about 2' from the wall. I just really wanted to be able to see games/movies from anywhere in the garage and then be able to swivel it towards my bench so I could easily view my .pdf factory manuals, wiring diagrams and my OBD II display (www.autotap.com) gauges on a bigger screen than my laptop.

The price of pipe and unistrut is a little higher than your mount, since you'd need to buy everything in 10' lengths. However, you would have enough material to make 2-3 ceiling mounts.

volleyball · Jul 23, 2014

So fix a couple of more tv's and you will be all set.

mojo3120 · Jul 24, 2014

ovilla said:
Always ask what's wrong with a "dead" tv. If they say that the front power light comes on, blinks, or the tv keeps cutting out, turns off on its own, or comes on after it's been plugged in for X number of hours/days, it more than likely just needs replacement caps. If no power light comes on at all, then it's more than likely 2 or more caps that need replacing.

When you open it up, look for and swap out any bloated caps or those with the plus sign. Make sure to look at the orientation of your caps. The stripe on one side of the cap is the negative side (-). Your new cap must go in the same orientation as your old one. I know some of you might not want to try soldering but you can definitely take the back of your tv apart with a #2 screwdriver, look for any sign of bad caps, and then take a pic before you disconnect all cables going to the bad board, which you can then take to a tv repair place and have them desolder and solder on your new caps. You can even bring them the part (from Radio Shack, shopjimmy.com, amazon, etc.) and then just pay them to do the sodlering for you.

Hair dryer test
If all the caps look fine, turn on the tv (or at least try to turn it on every 5 or so minutes while performing this test). Grab a heat gun (or any hair dryer) and set it on hot and swirl the hot air around the caps - about 2" away from the caps (and keep swirling the the air around, making little 1-2" circles around the caps). Stay on one board until you've heated each area of caps for 5-10 min, then move on to other sections or boards. What you're doing is helping the good looking cap to come up to its operating temp. If your tv then comes on and works fine - while it's still plugged in and your caps are nice and warm now - but won't come on later on without the use of your hair dryer, you've found the good looking BUT bad caps. Replace all the caps that you last heated with air. They are really cheap so replace them all, starting with the big caps first (1000 microfarad or higher). Just swap one or two and plug everything back in and turn on your tv so you can see if that solved your issue.

Note: The hair dryer test also works on bad caps that are visibly bad. Take off the back of the tv, plug it in and attempt to turn it on, while heating the area of the bad caps. If the caps haven't leaked everything out just yet, your tv set will come on for an hour or so.

PLEASE make sure you disconnect all power and cables from the board that you are doing any soldering on. The board should be totally on its own and on your bench so you can solder on it. Failure to do this will result in possible damage to the board that you are working on or to any other board that's connected to it.

Soldering station
All you need is a basic 40w or 60W set up. You can find these at Radio shack for about $20-$30 for a nice station with a damp sponge holder, which will allow you to easily swipe and clean the tip of your soldering iron. Check out youtube for how to use a soldering iron.

An ESR meter makes this type of work very easy. Often times it's the only way to find bad caps, as a cap can appear fine visually and read correct capacitance, but still be bad. Plus you can test ESR in circuit.

arrowhead · Jul 24, 2014

Opened up a tv mount thread and an electronics lesson broke out! Very cool thanks for the tips! I just fixed a busted vintage 5" Autometer tach for my son. One of the resistors was fried so I replaced and now it works fine. Like you said, it's not that difficult to remove and solder on new components - hard part is figuring out what's bad.

Trey T · Jul 24, 2014

I think I have the exact Samsung TV (40" 1080P built around 2009). Actually, I have two of them but one is dead. I was going to replace the whole PSB board for under $100 shipped but you have me the confident to fiddle with it.

dclassical · Jul 24, 2014

Sometimes you do not see the bulge on the caps, so using an ESR meter is a good idea. I have also seen Samsung and others needing new voltage regulators, so if you don't see caps, measure to input/ouput of those regs.

volleyball · Jul 24, 2014

Problem is that its not worth it for 1 tv. I'd like to have an ESR meter, but when do you stop?

ovilla · Jul 25, 2014

Trey T said:
I think I have the exact Samsung TV (40" 1080P built around 2009). Actually, I have two of them but one is dead. I was going to replace the whole PSB board for under $100 shipped but you have me the confident to fiddle with it.

Trey, thats exactly what my tv is (model number LN40A550P3F). Anyway, definitely open it up and check out the caps on your power supply board and do the hair dryer test on it. You really can't screw it up as there's plenty of room between circuits to allow for even a really big puddle of solder, which will be expected from a newbie. Even if you have to buy a soldering station and caps, you'll only be into it about $25-$30 total. I bought a big bag of 50 or so different sized caps for about $5 and am set for a while. Plus a soldering station comes in really handy for installing alarms, stereos, or doing any other automotive wiring work where you want to ensure it will never come apart on you.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

ovilla · Jul 25, 2014

volleyball said:
Problem is that its not worth it for 1 tv. I'd like to have an ESR meter, but when do you stop?

Agreed! It will just take more time to de-solder caps to check capacitance or just swap them for new caps. With a good 60W soldering iron, and a little practice, you should be able to remove a cap from a board in under a minute (and that's with you just taking your time to do it right).

Why would you want to buy an ESR Meter?
Unfortunately, a cap can be within its "acceptable" microfarad capacitance range (within 10% of its stated rating of say 1000 microfarads) and yet still be behaving more like a resistor and impeding electrical current erratically. Kind of like a car battery that reads 12 volts and yet it can't handle the internal load of starting your car. So, you might have a cap that looks fine (not bulged or showing signs of electrical leakage) and yet internally it has degraded to 100 times its normal resistance, while its capacitance rating remains fine! This is where the ESR meter comes in: It measures the equivalent series resistance of the capacitor (in Ohms), which you can then bump off a chart to see if its within spec for the microfarad rating and voltage of the cap you are testing. The best part is that you can do it "in circuit" without having to de-solder anything.

If you're going to be fixing a lot of electronics, then they are worth the $50-$150 investment. You can even buy kits where you can solder all the circuits and assemble the ESR meter yourself.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

volleyball · Jul 25, 2014

I know what they are. But like a lot of tools that will only get used once, how far do you go? It would be easy to invest the cost of buying a brand new tv for the price of tools to fix it. Now if you are doing several, it gets cheaper. Plus the question of whether you will be able to troubleshoot it enough, in a reasonable amount of time, to actually fix it.
Pro shops are full of such units that they could not fix.
I think people venturing into this should know that there chances first or second time at bat are low. I call things like this winter projects, things to do inside when its too cold to venture out, and night comes early.
As far as caps go, most displays need the harder to find higher temp caps if they expect long term results. Also be aware of dimensions. A wide short cap won't fit where a narrow cap is needed due to density.

foamer01 · Jul 25, 2014

volleyball said:
I bought a full articulating wall mount for my home tv that is good for 120 lbs for about $45.

Do you have a link for the mount you bought?
Thanks

I Love Grits · Jul 25, 2014

foamer01 said:
Do you have a link for the mount you bought?
Thanks

Not OP but check out Monoprice.

http://www.monoprice.com/Category?c_id=108&cp_id=10828

volleyball · Jul 25, 2014

Bought mine awhile ago but at monoprice, this looks like what I bought. The thing is strong, you lag bolt into 2 studs. You can hang off of it.
http://www.monoprice.com/Product?c_id=108&cp_id=10828&cs_id=1082806&p_id=8589&seq=1&format=2

I like that you can turn it right or left, makes it easier to get to the back to plug things in. The surface mount ones means one person holds it while someone else plugs or un plugs.

Trey T · Jul 25, 2014

^I have that exact mount for my 40" LCD. It's very stout and good quality. I bought several of them, different style too, but that one is the best one I got.

dclassical · Jul 25, 2014

For caps I use Nichicon (from Mouser) and really like them. I have repaired multiple TVs, Monitors and pro audio gear, so the ESR meter was nice, but for a one time use I can understand! (though remember you do not have to remove the cap to use the ESR meter).

My new shop TV and DIY Ceiling mount

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