My computer repair guy just changed out my leaking caps for 5$ each (x3)

the OEM ones are rated at 105 degrees. oem

I WONder why they go bad.

How hot does a car get in the summer??

Under the hood?

hmmmm..

Nice to find a cheap fix whatever the reason.

 

Slightly OT, but a couple of months back, my fridge quit working. The repair guy came out and found the board that controls the compressor went out. He said I needed a new board but they were no longer available. I tried searching around for one on the net but none were to be found. I pulled the old board out and found it was a relay that had burned out. Luckily I could get a new relay for about $15 shipped. I replaced it myself and, knock on wood, it still working two months later. I saved myself a bunch of money and saved sending a perfectly good fridge to the scrapper. If only I could have figured out it was the board and been able to find it, I would have saved the $80 repair call.

 

OT is ok, I wonder how 'normal' people survive in this economy. trying to pay other people to fix things almost never works out. We should all know how to diagnose everything from plumbing to roof leaks to becoming fuel injection experts and read our own lab work (hundreds of dollars cheaper (btw). ie Go to a medical lab for 30 bucks and you can get ALL the blood tests they have. The printouts come out colorcoded. Hi Lo and normal. Doctors charge over 300$ to 'explain' them to us, for instance. Maybe I should look for an open forum. :-)

 

Ahhh... that 105deg rating is celcius.. which is 221 deg farenheit!
As for the question why these electrolytic caps go bad, the answer is they dry out with all those repeated heating/cooling cycles, and once that happens they over heat and bulge or explode. Caps are probably the most short lived component in an electronics circuit, if it wasn't for them most of these boards could last indefinitely.

 

Thanks for the reality check. Just glad the fix was cheap