My biggest worry is if I disassemble it to try and repair it, I don't want to make things worse. I've read too many other horror stories about working on these iMac's. Complexity doesn't really bother me, I've torn down/ rebuilt 3-4 iBook's from scratch. My only worry would be working close to the CRT. I've never worked on anything with a CRT inside of it, but naturally I'd take more precautions.

Hard drive replacement is a must, though. I have a friend saying that he remembers the hard drives on these old iMac's always being pretty loud, but I know they should be very quiet machines.

Looks like I'll be trying to source a new inner bezel. :-/