Theory works!

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rattus

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A couple of days ago, my Genie garage door opener quit on me, so I do what I always do, grabbed a cap out of the junk box and installed it. It worked, sorta. It was growly and would quit about halfway up or down. Apparently drawing too much current. Then I realized that the "new" cap was 140mfd, twice as much as required. Lucky for me, I had another 140mfd cap which I wired in series to achieve 70mfd. Now it works just fine, but it is not pretty. Finally broke down and ordered the right cap. Mr. Cheap hates to spend money on stuff like that.
 
rattus said:
I had another 140mfd cap which I wired in series to achieve 70mfd. Now it works just fine, but it is not pretty. Finally broke down and ordered the right cap. Mr. Cheap hates to spend money on stuff like that.
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Well the unpretty fix shows that you have skills beyond average.

I always like it when I can do a non-standard fix with some spare parts I have kept around.
 
back at the beginning of summer it was about 90? out and almost 100? inside when my wife call me, she had called an AC tech out who said my condenser unit compressor had failed and the big selling garbage that the whole system had to be replaced, well I rushed home, and grabed some test equipment was went around back to it, as he had the covers off but didn't know I would get there that fast, I found it had tripped the breaker, and when I looked at the unit I thought what looked like a field mouse had made a nest in it, but turned out to be what was left of the starting cap for the fan motor, I went into my garage and located a replacement cap installed it reset the breaker, and it fired right up, came in the house right in front of this tech and felt the cold air comming out of the vent and made a point of saying all fixed, this guys jaw just dropped, as he also felt the cold air coming out of the vent, knowing he and been made he just said "well you don't need me I guess" and I said, no we don't and he left never asking for anything, wife now knows to call me first.:rant:

Anytime I see old AC units or equipment being tossed I strip out the parts like caps and contactors.
 
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I have two genies and I don't like them, but that's another story.

I had a Chamberlain made garage door opener that worked in every way except the remote controls wouldn't work on it... of course the parts had been obsoleted... why I don't know.

I bought a cheap remote controller to " push the button" which worked, but it didn't have nearly the range of the original... so I experimented with a piece of coax cable as an antenna outside the garage. helped some but still not as good as the original .

wasn't too long before two of my relatives' openers each had a little plastic gear go bad in theirs... they each replaced the whole shebang, and I had a nice supply of spare parts.

I don't like having a lot of junk sitting around, but it seems to me to be a shame to pitch serviceable stuff

My daughter has a Ford focus with a trunk latch that doesn't work. Last week I spent about 3 hours fooling with that thing. The only thing I could see wrong was the latching parts themselves are steel and they originally had about 1/16" plastic coating on them which was worn through. I thought sure I could file this a little, grind that a little, and adjust this and that a little, and get that stupid thing to work.

That is the most finely filed, ground, lubed, and adjusted thing on the planet, and it might be some improved, but it still doesn't work.
 
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rattus said:
A couple of days ago, my Genie garage door opener quit on me, so I do what I always do, grabbed a cap out of the junk box and installed it. It worked, sorta. It was growly and would quit about halfway up or down. Apparently drawing too much current. Then I realized that the "new" cap was 140mfd, twice as much as required. Lucky for me, I had another 140mfd cap which I wired in series to achieve 70mfd. Now it works just fine, but it is not pretty. Finally broke down and ordered the right cap. Mr. Cheap hates to spend money on stuff like that.
Click to expand...

I have done that many times, but usually the other way - paralleling them to achieve higher capacitance. Usually because I don't have the same capacitor as original. Quite often I have to temporarily rig them up until I can return with the right one, as there often is not room for multiple capacitors in the space where the original one was mounted. But it gets the equipment going again.
 
Had a mason give me his big block saw saying something like "here you fix this". I took one look at it and knew the caps were bad. The thing was ancient and there was no way to get any numbers off the thing. I could see it had already been hacked.

I got the nameplate data and called Emerson. I was floored, Emerson sent me a perfect wiring diagram for the motor from 1964. Service !! Cap data and connections right there. Put two new caps in and gave it back to the mason. He said it never ran so good. It had probably been running with one cap until that gave out.
 
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