Forum Discussion
road-runner
Sep 13, 2017Explorer III
Just FYI, this is what the wikipedia article lists for the symptoms of a bad run capacitor (I know it says "wrong capacitance", and a bad capacitor is the wrong capacitance):
"If a wrong capacitance value is installed, it will cause an uneven magnetic field around the rotor. This causes the rotor to hesitate at the uneven spots, resulting in irregular rotation, especially under load. This hesitation can cause the motor to become noisy, increase energy consumption, cause performance to drop and the motor to overheat."
I became acutely aware of this when the run capacitor on my well pump went bad. The symptom was that it was popping its breaker. I was really happy that the solution was simple, because the motor is 600' down.
"If a wrong capacitance value is installed, it will cause an uneven magnetic field around the rotor. This causes the rotor to hesitate at the uneven spots, resulting in irregular rotation, especially under load. This hesitation can cause the motor to become noisy, increase energy consumption, cause performance to drop and the motor to overheat."
I became acutely aware of this when the run capacitor on my well pump went bad. The symptom was that it was popping its breaker. I was really happy that the solution was simple, because the motor is 600' down.
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