Mrs Morris insisted on a house call for her 1995 Sony KV-W32SN11 and when I arrived at her place, I could see the reason why. She lived in a valley where the only way in or out was via some very long and steep steps. My AG-1 chassis service manual had already told me that this set had a 32-inch wide-screen picture tube and weighed 73kg. Please, I prayed - please let this fault be straightforward and easy.

Items Covered This Month Sony KV-W32SN11 TV set (AG-1 chassis) Sony KV-XS29M33 TV set (BG-3S chassis) Sony KV-ES34M31 TV set (AG-3 chassis) Philips 25PT4473/75R TV set (L7.3A chassis) Samsung CB5913WT TV set (25P88MT chassis)

The set was dead and to my relief, the reason was fairly obvious. A large electrolytic capacitor (C1625, 1000μF 250V) had exploded and taken out the T5A main fuse (F3601), leaving an utter mess on the bottom left of the cabinet.

Removing the F1 module where the capacitor was mounted was like trying to solve a Chinese puzzle. In fact, it involved almost completely dismantling the rear AV-interface J Board but it wasn’t immediately clear how you undo the Meccano-like set of plastic supports. What’s more, the service manual was extremely vague on this. However, I eventually worked out which way the multiple, concealed, interlocking, black plastic clips were meant to be bent and which screws had to be undone in order to remove the assemblies.

The problem now was twofold. First, why did this electrolytic capacitor blow? And second, was there any damage to other circuits?