"hexHead®" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 11 Nov 2007 20:10:10 GMT, "James Sweet"
wrote:


"hexHead®" wrote in message
. ..

I bought a Sony KDF42WE655 42" LCD back in 07/2005.
I've been told that life expectancy of the lamp was about 2 years.
Lately, it seems the set has been a little slow in powering up, and
the screen stays dim a little longer than it used to when doing so.
Anticipating that the lamp may be wearing out, I went ahead and
ordered a replacement lamp (XL-2100) from Crutchfield just last month.

Lo and behold, the lamp finally did fail last night - the
Power/Standby indicator would just flash, and eventually the Lamp
indicator came on. OK, no problem, I have a new lamp and a Service
manual.

But when I removed the front cover and removed the lamp cover, I
noticed the plastic surrounding the lamp was warped, obviously from
heat - almost as though it had started to melt.

I can only see one fan - directly behind the lamp holder, blowing out
the rear of the set - and it seems to be functioning normally,
slightly dusty but easily cleaned. The Service Manual indicated that
there may be as many as FOUR fans in this unit.

Should I be worried? How hard is it to disassemble this TV for a
closer look?

Is it plastic that gets replaced when the lamp is replaced? If so, don't
worry about it, the lamp runs hotter as it approaches end of life.


No, it was the plastic that lined the lamp cavity in the set.
It wasn't much, but it was warped enough to cause concern.
Fact is, I bought the replacement only a month ago - talk about good
timing... and at that time, I took out my lamp replacement
instructions from the manual and went ahead and removed the front
cover, just to make sure I could I guess - and there was no visible
warping then. So yea, you must be right - the lamp warmed up
considerably right before it went. That seems to be the case because
the lamp I removed actually had a small blackish "scorch" mark on one
side as though it flashed before it went out....

Today, just to make sure, I went ahead and removed the rear cover as
well and cleaned everything out including removing all thedust
build-up in the four fans - seems to be humming along so far...

Clean out or replace the fan - this is a common problem. Sometimes the door
gets so warped that the door switch no longer functions.

Mark Z.