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Thread ID: 97475 2009-02-17 09:15:00 What does "out of spec capacitor" mean? 2sons (14628) PC World Chat
Post ID Timestamp Content User
748668 2009-02-18 10:24:00 Well till us with all your wisdom roddy_boy what it dose mean.
:)

It's already been explained about 5 times in this thread, you tried to summarise it but failed miserably and did it wrong.
roddy_boy (4115)
748669 2009-02-18 18:59:00 . Trev (427)
748670 2009-02-19 05:21:00 If the capacitor was rated at 100uF (micro farad) (as an example) over time the chemicals/materials may degrade, the capacity might drop (or increase) for example and now it may be 20uF .

Now even though it still says 100uF on the label, it's only 20uF, and is now "out of spec" (since it was specified as 100uf in the factory)

ESR (equivalent series resistance) can also change, in more extreme cases the whole thing might go short circuit or open circuit
Agent_24 (57)
748671 2009-02-19 11:19:00 .

Finally you make a useful contribution to this forum.
roddy_boy (4115)
748672 2009-02-19 15:35:00 capacitors in DC circuits are used to filter out the lumps and surge peaks from a rectifier or diode bridge, AC circuits however act to either block DC entering a circuit (eg amplifier circuits) or create a phase shift (90° between maximum current = minimum voltage and vice versa and hence act a bit like a resistor which wont work on DC) out of spec could mean the capacitor has turned into a static resistor (steady resistance), gone open (infinite), shorted or decreased in capacity all of which could cause the motor to need a push to start or in the case of a motor which the output shaft is inaccessible will need a new capacitor with the exception of shorted which will stall the motor and if the resistance of the failed capacitor can cause a large enough flux in the start coil to stall the motor williamF (115)
748673 2009-02-20 11:39:00 As capacitors age, they dry out, leak, or otherwise die. Their whole repair was most likely looking through the circut boards for a capacitor showing signs of bulging, desoldering, and resoldering on a new one. Neongreen (6358)
748674 2009-02-22 02:41:00 "open circuited overload protector"

Well, I'm certainly not as clued up as the others in this thread, but to me, the quoted bit simply means "a fuse had blown"
Paul.Cov (425)
748675 2009-02-22 03:28:00 Well, I'm certainly not as clued up as the others in this thread, but to me, the quoted bit simply means "a fuse had blown"

Whilst the fridge most likely has a fuse in the line, as R2x1 said, the compressor motor will have a thermal overload protector relay. This will most likely be some form of bi-metal device sensing motor temperature which switches the motor off if it gets too warm.

The repair people said this had failed as well as the (start) capacitor.

It has now taken 27 replies to answer the original question ROFL :clap
Terry Porritt (14)
748676 2009-02-22 16:09:00 Yeah, Terry.

We gotta feed the Slurp Spiders something!
SurferJoe46 (51)
748677 2009-02-22 19:20:00 Fridge threads on PF1 are traditionally a bit verbose ;) R2x1 (4628)
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