Pioneer SA8800 Needs help

Hello to all. I have been reading this forum for about four months looking for info on vintage stereo equipment. It has been very helpful as I am new to the vintage audio. I purchased a SA8800 amp approximately one month ago and when I purchased it it was in working condition. I took it upon myself to take apart the amp and clean all the boards and major areas without removing any boards with isopropyl alcohol and a paint brush due to the heavy amount of residue on the boards (most likely due to someone smoking that used it). I used electrical grade contact cleaner on the pots and replaced the old spring loaded speaker connectors with 5 way binding posts. So after getting it back together the unit wouldn't power on and the main fuse kept blowing every time i powered it up. After scouring these forums, I came to believe that the transistors connected to the heat sink were causing a short in the system due to mis-alignment of the mia insulators. Took off heat sink and got them back into position and added a heat sink compound. This time it powered up and didn't blow a main fuse but the fluroscan display will not work now. I managed to connect it up to speakers to see if it would play audio and it does but the audio is very scratchy at low and high volumes and not all the speaker A and B will play. Took a MM to test according to the service manual. Most of them are close if not right on to the mV of the service manual and even adjusted the DC balance and idle current to current spec. I believe that the man I bought the unit from stated that he recapped the unit but no 100% sure on this. Wondering where to go from this. I am currently on shift and will be home tomorrow working on getting this thing up and running. Any advice would be awesome and just keep in mind that I am very green to most of this other than what I have taught myself from reading forums. Thanks again and look foward to the replies.

When the display doesn't light up, does the rest of the amp power up? ie...the pilot lamp, protection relay click etc?

first job is list all power supply voltages ..report back with a format like this ......
j1 60v
j2 -58v
etc ..
that is just an example by the way . i made it up .so don't expect anything like that .

I was having trouble viewing the post so sorry for the late reply. JCNASH the amp power light doesn't click on but the relay clicks on and I can get audio out but just very distorted. So not sure exactly if this is the way but I read all the readings for the power board and are as listed with expected voltage versus what I read on MM in parenthesis.

AWR-182 Power supply
1. Pin 18 +48v DC (+49)
2. Pin 17 0v + 32v DC (+32.1)
3. Pin 15 -7v -32v DC (-33)
4. Pin 14 +48v DC (-48)
5. Pin 25 +50v DC (+56.3)
6. Pin 23 -50v DC (-56.6)
7. Pin 22 -50v DC (-56.4)
8. Pin 20 +50v DC (+56)
9. Pin 28 (+.1)
10. Pin 29 (0.00)
11. Pin 13 8v (varied from neg to positive)

your pin 14 has to be a typo .
pin 8 is ac and for power on light

measure ac volts between pins 10 and 11 indicator board awv-001
should read 4.3v ac
also check pin 4 45v dc

Ok I will and post the results soon... rechecked pin 14 and its -48... not sure what that means. Pin 4 on the awv-001 read 50.4v

pin 14 should be -48v so no problem there .

Ok I didn't know if it matters but I replaced the non-polarized power cord with a polarized one. The one that was on it had been cut and spliced with a newer power cord. i figured that it wouldn't be a problem... other than that I turned it on a the heat sink seems to be very hot only a few moments after turning it on....

sounds like the bias/idle current is set too high . the pots are not good on these and if they lose contact with the wiper the current runs flat out and blows the outputs . been there done that .
have you got a dim bulb tester ?

Ok. I can try and set the idle current again or check and see what it is running at. I did it before I got more into this project so maybe it needs to be adjusted again. I don't have a dim bulb tester but can get one. Also I have been looking more closely at the amp and power boards and it looks like some of the parts may be burned out. I will try and post pictures tomorrow. Thanks for the help so far been a little busy with family stuff so I haven't had as much time to work on this thing.

check the power supply for burnt resistors .. 10 ohm of i remember rightly . brown colour . mine likes to burn them up .
i once blew outputs adjusting bias .it was a bad trim pot .i recommend changing them and building a dim bulb tester it will save the output transistors . these non switching amps aren't forgiving at all and if the bias trimmer opens up its goodbye power transistors and they aren't available any-more .