PT-L64CX questions

[tglore]

I have a PT-L64CX that was given to me and it's not in the best shape and I'm wondering if it's worth trying to fix or not. My friend says that all it needs is a new lamp and it will work but I'm not sure if I want to spend the money to find out. I have also found other potential problems.
Here is what I'm dealing with
First the Lamp cover part LSYK1383 is gone and after searching I cannot find one for sale anywhere. Every site that has this part listed says it has been discontinued.
So when I power up the TV I get the 2 orange light diag flash.

Second the lamp is bad for sure and it looks like my friend that replaced the lamp was very impatient with trying to get the housing open the second time because one of the metal lamp clips that hold it in place was broken like he was fishing around in there with a screw driver. If I do replace the lamp I will replace the housing unit with it.

I have the lamp out of the housing and I put the housing unit back in and I manually hold down the lamp cover switch and power it up and I hear the fans start up and I hear what sounds like the ballasts clicking for a short time then pause and then it repeats this cycle 3-4 more times then the power button flashes red continuously(no pattern) and the lamp led flashes red also. I don't know much about TV's but I do work with computers and I took this as a sign of "so far so good" as the TV seems to have passed all of its initial start up tests and errored out when trying to fire up the lamp which it should because there was no lamp to fire up. But I know I'm not in the clear yet.

So if I can't find the lamp cover part, which I probably won't be able too, it seems I could work around this quite easy by placing something to hold the lamp cover switch down and then place something over the cover area to keep the ventilation working as designed. Any suggestions here would help :)

Here are my questions
If there were any major problems with one of the chipboard's I wouldn't have got the 2 orange diag, it would have failed with another diag before that right?
Is there anything I'm missing or any suggestions for the lamp cover work around I described above? Does anyone know where I might possibly find this part to buy?
I also don't have a remote but I'm sure there must be a good universal remote out there that would work with this TV, any suggestions there?
And finally do you think it's worth the $120 for the lamp w/housing to see if this thing is going to work? If not I guess I could always return it and loose out on the return shipping and 25% restocking fee.


Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

[tglore]

My bad the model number is PT-60LCX64.

I got a new lamp and its working great, however I cannot reset the lamp timer. I have bought a universal remote that has a pip and a swap button but no split button. I have searched all over and from what I found you hold the pip button down on the remote and the volume down button on the tv for 5 seconds to reset the lamp timer but I have tried this many times and no go. Some sites I have found say to hold the split button down on the remote and the volume down on the tv but this remote doesn't have a split button and most of the universal remotes I looked at didn't have a split button. It seems that when I hold the pip button down the remote only sends one signal rather than a continuous signal. I really want to reset this lamp timer so I get all the life out of the lamp I can so any suggestions on a remote that will do this would be great. Also I didn't find any other way to reset the lamp besides the remote pip/volume down tv method. Is this true?

Thanks,

Tyson