Solved: Vizio Widescreen LCD TV VW26L No Power On

Also solved: Shuts off/turns on by itself
Also solved: Buttons do not work

So this television is turning out to be a winner, for a free unit. Thank God for the ability to fix things!

The Vizio model VW26L was designed to fail. The materials and components and physical case design all contribute. This unit failed within 3 years of manufacture, and the list price was in the $500-600+ range. Totally unacceptable life span in my opinion.

The first problem was that the power supply would not start up and the television would not turn on. The power supply had three failed capacitors. They were obviously bad, with bulged tops. I replaced them with good caps and the screen would then turn on. Encouraged and a little ahead of myself, I slapped it in the entertainment center. Turns out it liked to switch itself off and back on whenever it felt like it. And the menus were unusable and the volume unadjustable because the volume "up" button (also the menu "right" selector) didn't work.

I pulled it out and opened it back up again, and tested the switches on the control panel. They all switched, but one (the input switch) was missing its top half but still worked. The short version of this story is that the most-used switches got a little "soft" with age, and they don't have the springiness they used to have. That combined with a button that is a little bent from pressing too-hard, and the buttons didn't stay out properly. I ended up replacing the power, volume up, and input selection switches from spares. These are super-duper TINY switches, and I was glad indeed to have one (only one!) circuit board laying about with the same-size switch. They are also surface-mount. If you can't solder surface mounted components, you may be out of luck. I have a hunch if you have the remote you may be able to just leave the switch board unplugged, but I'm not sure.

So, but the thing still turned itself off. This was a function of heat. There was (emphasis on the past tense) a flat indented section on the back panel, directly over the hottest part of the power supply, the low voltage switching section's heat sinks. I noted that the TV would be very warm on this spot on the back case when it shut off. The rest of the case is full of holes, but not on this one hot spot! I dug through my fans and found a small, super-quiet one and cut out the flat part of the back panel over the hot spot. The fan now blows cool air directly on these heat sinks. I used a 12V fan that will run off 5VDC and tied into the 5V lines coming off the power supply board. It turned out to be a constant-on power source, but the fan is so quiet I don't mind it always running.

Be careful of the screws for the rear panel. The ones on the raised back are all machine screws (fine threads) except the ones that screw into the clear speaker housing plastic. Those, like the ones all around the outside are coarse threaded. Too much torque or too-long a screw, and you will strip the threads right out of the plastic. Also be careful when fitting the back cover - it is a little floppy, and it really is much easier to put on when the TV is standing upright (not lying on its face).

My Darling Wife was pleased to find that the digital tuner picked up music channels off the cable that our $10 27" CRT Sony couldn't see. She "tested" those all day. So now all I have to do is get used to the poor vertical viewing angle of an LCD TV and we're set . . .