Re: Hard to find Cap

Sorry to hear it wouldn't start. Hope you were able to get some usable parts from it.

Re: Hard to find Cap



Google refrigerator hard start kit and you'll find several examples. It's an extra capacitor parallel to the run capacitor during the start up to increase the starting torque. A relay drops the start capacitor out of the circuit after the amperage drops close to the normal FLA.
Your terminal markings should stand for neutral, line and hermetic. You could take your capacitor to an appliance shop that sells parts and ask them to check it for you. Did you find a schematic in the unit?...

Re: Hard to find Cap

There should be a schematic somewhere on that unit. Scan it and post it if you can.
It looks as though you have a dual capacitor for the compressor and a fan motor. Usually one side will be a lower capacitance but yours only seems to say 17 uf. It's hard to tell from your pics, is that a sheen of oil on top?
A lot of these units get tossed because the compressor is suspect when something simple has gone wrong, like a defective water level switch. A stuck compressor can sometimes be broken loose with a start kit.

Re: bad caps of the 1990's played havoc with car ECU's

I understood the OP to mean that the caps failed during the '80s and '90s. Not that they were now failing. I remember a lot of ECU problems during those decades. Did I misunderstand? At the time I was working in the HVAC field and solid state boards were just becoming common in a/c and heating equipment. Now I wonder if some of the many failures were due to bad caps.

Re: New Members - please post your introductions here

Just found this forum while searching for failure rate on some bad caps in my computer power supply. It looked interesting so I decided to join.