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Popped Capacitors

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  • I got the same class action postcards too but like a stack ten of them. It was capacitors direct. Money is money if they send me a free $2 I'll take it.
  • ercoerco Posts: 20,244
    Those class action suits are ridiculous. Half the money is blown tracking down people and distributing a million postcards and $2 checks. Only the lawyers make out. Figure out a "reasonable" net fine for the company and have them pay that towards the National Debt.

    A drop in the ocean, either way.
  • Yesterday I got a postcard in the mail notifying me that I've been identified as a potential member of a class suing a list of capacitor manufacturers. This is due to faulty electrolytic caps I may have purchased in the past. Apparently, I don't have to do anything to remain in the class, but I have to notify the litigants if I want to excuse myself from the class and pursue damages on my own.

    I threw the postcard away. By the time any damages trickle down to me from my minuscule purchases, I might have a check for ten cents to cash.

    -Phil

    Same here - if any money is collected, the lawyers will get it...
  • xanaduxanadu Posts: 3,347
    edited 2018-08-08 21:37
    No air conditioning for 3 days. I made assumptions and decided not to troubleshoot.

    Popped cap... $300 installed :/

  • xanadu wrote: »
    No air conditioning for 3 days. I made assumptions and decided not to troubleshoot.

    Popped cap... $300 installed :/

    I've fixed a few A/Cs just by replacing the run cap for around $10 but I'm sure the one they installed for $300 was a very nice one indeed :)
    I wonder if they would put a "cap" on cap service charges, these things are so easy to replace and the usual thing that fails.

  • Hope they changed out the contactor and checked the wires into it. Had a nasty surprise when the outside fan motor failed. (Oh, make sure to get exact replacement parts, not necessarily OEM, but same form, fit, no extra wires and openings some "universal" replacements have). Changed out the fan motor, decided to inspect the rest. Contactor surface fried and not worth doing anything with, spent $25 for new higher rating part. Found leads from wall box were........aluminum!!! And the anti-oxidant compound was crumbling off. Think motor was $100 @parts house. So for under $200, fan good and fire potential remedied.
  • kwinnkwinn Posts: 8,697
    Hope they changed out the contactor and checked the wires into it. Had a nasty surprise when the outside fan motor failed. (Oh, make sure to get exact replacement parts, not necessarily OEM, but same form, fit, no extra wires and openings some "universal" replacements have). Changed out the fan motor, decided to inspect the rest. Contactor surface fried and not worth doing anything with, spent $25 for new higher rating part. Found leads from wall box were........aluminum!!! And the anti-oxidant compound was crumbling off. Think motor was $100 @parts house. So for under $200, fan good and fire potential remedied.

    Those years where aluminum was used sure caused a lot of problems. A few years back I was visiting a friend and noticed some light flashes at the back of his refrigerator. After pulling the fridge out found it was coming from the electrical outlet, and on taking the cover plate off and inspecting it found aluminum wiring and a copper only outlet, which was replaced with a proper one.

    A few weeks later there was a fire at a house nearby that started in the kitchen.
  • OY!
    That wakes up an old memory. The house I grew up in, and lived in for many years until I did indeed move on, had that style of wiring for the first part of its many years.

    When it was first built everyone was convinced that circumstances overseas would cause a shortage of copper wire for well wiring houses and buildings and so forth. So they made stuff up out of aluminum. And as you discovered Kwinn, the two metals react badly. According to authorities, special fittings are needed to prevent further happenings like the one you related.
  • Yes, there are special fittings for transitioning to / from copper and aluminum wiring. Refer to NFPA NEC 201x for specifics, and local codes which supersede if more stringent than NFPA NEC. In addition, you would also want to use a paste called Nolux which further prevents oxidation and corrosion of the wiring. Oxidation means weaker connections, heat which can cause a fire if the corrosion causes higher resistance at the junction. E^2/R. Don't like aluminum, grew up in 60s and 70s. Stuff scares me. Be very careful here. Always pull permits and work to code/local ordinance. If not, the best you can hope for is the city may make you pull it all out (and fines) or the sale of your property may be delayed or stopped. Worse case would be a fire and the insurance company WILL weasel out of paying. Our latest dec page for homeowners makes that very clear.

    Sorry to digress from caps. Seen to many people install stuff on their own and wonder at the bad outcomes. We fired an (licensed?!?!?) electrician who quoted us a job for 220 line for a hot tub, then did not want to pull permits or meet local code. He did not want to pull permits and his plan did not meet city codes (found this out when I went to pull the permits). Fired him right then. I did the job. Green tag on rough-in, green tag on final inspection. And yes, after seeing answers all over the boards on the net, spent the $100 for a copy of the NEC current that year.
  • erco wrote: »
    A drop in the ocean, either way.
    I was part of one (and only one) suit that paid off for me. Had a Whirlpool gas water heater with some sort of "flame lock" or other BS technology. Supposed to prevent fires from vapors, blah blah blah. Only problem was that you had to have a licensed plumber clean out the thing every three months. At my expense. Right.
    And it had a non-standard thermocouple connection (left-hand threads or something like that).
    Guess which part kept deciding that the pilot light wasn't lit, every few months. And which part you could get only from Whirlpool. Lowe's supposedly carried the part, but it was always out of stock here.
    Along came the suit, and I ended up getting a whole new burner assembly and control valve, installed, for free. No more problems...
    ...less than a year later (and on New Year's Day), the tank started to leak. Badly.
    Walter
    P.S. My house has aluminum wiring. Insurance company says we'll give you 10% off your premium if you replace all of the wiring. Estimated cost was $4000-6000 (including upping the service capacity). 10% off premium was about $100 a year. Payback time: 40-60 years. But wait, insurer wants wiring replaced every 9 years.
  • sounds like an episode of Property Brothers..... it's always something....
  • wmosscrop, if my house had aluminum wiring I'd replace it yesterday regardless of the insurance. The 15 minutes when aluminum wiring made economic sense was over a long time ago but the fire risk remains. Aluminum is OK if installed perfectly, but is yours installed perfectly? Are you sure? There is no reason to periodically replace copper wiring, it's proven to be stable. I've had to replace my breaker box (yeah, it tried to start a fire, the old one's no longer code compliant) but the actual wires are all the same ones installed when the house was built around 1972.
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    Oh yeah. I once lived in a house that was built in 1867. In 1990 or so, after we had been there some decades we decided to rewire it. A lot of the wiring from it's original electrification (not sure when that happened) was still in place and in use. Good old copper conductors with a protective outer sheath of lead. Still quite serviceable.

  • Hi

    When I bought our house, I decided to replace all the old round pin sockets and found that the wiring insulation was made of rubber. It had gone hard and brittle; you could not bend it without the rubber insulation falling off leaving bare wires!!! Needless to say I replace the lot.
    In those days the world was full of DIY books on everything- central heating, electrical wiring, car maintenance, TV repair, etc etc. Can't do it these days without a certificate to 'prove' you know what you are doing..

    Dave
  • There are still many good DIY books out there, just requires a certain level of literacy to understand the content as well as sense enough to know when to say when. And where and when to look for and spend if need be on the resources to get it safely correct every time. DIY is great for everyday homeowner stuff like fixing a light switch or socket. But if you plan to run a new line into say, the garage for your new 220V wire welder or out back for a hot tub, DIY is a good starting point. But you better invest in a copy of the NFPA's NEC 20xx book and any city codes and permits where you will likely find out in no uncertain terms what you did not know from the inspector. The Internet has a lot of good and bad advice and the novice can't tell the difference. Sometimes answers on the net really illustrate the old saying "Opinions are like ---holes and everybody has one". And yes, some municipalities do require certification for certain systems.
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