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“The plastic knob on the channel selector broke, so a vise-grip on the post from the tuner is used as it is too hard to turn with just fingers.”

I see. I actually did something similar once with a dot matrix printer that was missing the paper feed knob.

What’s the make and vintage of your TV?

I had a portable 13 inch TV I kept in the garage of a Mobile service station when I worked as an auto mechanic after I got out of the service years ago. Well I used a small vice grip to turn the channel because the plastic knob was broken. At the same time I was using another small vice grip to open the window of my car because the gear was stripped and the handle would just spin without opening the window. So I had a vice grip permanently locked on the window gear and the TV channel gear at the same time.

Years later when I was hunting around a you pick it and you pull it junk yard for a sun visor that would match my wife's car, I found a small vice grip locked on the window gear of a car I found a visor.

I had a good chuckle because it reminded me of my that old car and that old TV some 30 years earlier. I ended up giving the junk yard dealer $3 for the visor, and when I related the story of my TV and car window, he let me keep the vice grip for free.

I always thought of vice grips as being the duct tape of the tool box.

Ok. My father had a 19” Sylvania from 1979 to 1992 that he got rid of after it developed tuner problems (the knobs didn’t fall off; it had trouble locking onto channels).

He had a Commodore 64 that required a video stabilizer box to work with this TV, which didn’t like the computer’s video signal (something to do with the sync pulses). The picture would roll without the box. In fact, the user’s manual for the Playstation 2 still included a warning that you might get a rolling picture on some TVs.

The user’s manual for the Wii no longer includes such a warning.