[Boatanchors] CAPACITORS

[W4AWM at aol.com]

Many thanks to all for the many suggestions for testing or substitition of 
the motor starting capacitor I was asking about. As usual, all you gentlemen 
offered good advice in a timely manner. 

To make a long story short, and I hope all home trouble shooters can learn 
something from this, I tried everything and the fan motor would still not start. 
In true ham fashion, I decided that the fan was destined for the great land 
fill in the sky, but first, I would strip it for the goodly amount of black 
anodized hardware it possesses. I finally got it apart, icluding clipping those 7 
nice color coded leads right where they entered the motor.  Then I thought 
that just possibly, if I pulled the motor apart, I might find that the common 
lead had separated where it could be seen and even possibly fixed. The leads 
were tiewrapped to the coil in 2 places. Under one of the ties was some insulated 
paper and this is where the leads connected to the magnet wire in the motor 
each covered by some slide on spaghetti. I cyt the first wrap and slid the 
paper off, exposing the spaghetti.  When I cut the second tie wrap, something fell 
off. It was 2 black leads and a piece of spaghetti.  "AHA!" thought I, this 
is where the magnet wire must have broken.  WRONG!  I looked for a broken piece 
but did not see it. When I pulled the spaghetti back on the black leads, I 
found a thermostatic fuse! This is simliar to the ones found in hair driers, but 
rated at 2 amps and a 
115 degree C temperature. It was tiewrapped under that second wrap right 
against the motor windings. Of course it was blown, but I did not know if my 
fooling around with the cap had caused the problem or if that had been the trouble 
from the git-go.

I just had to know. The leads from the control box would be too short if I 
removed the 3 inch wire length from where I had cut the 7 leads and spliced the 
resulting shorter leads directly to the magnet wire, so I dutifully spliced, 
soldered and shrink tubed 5 of the leads and without the fuse, fired it up. It 
ran on all speeds! Now I will try to find the correct fuse and tie wrap it to 
the windings in another spot so that the remaining 2 leads will be easier to 
handle. These were wired in series with the incoming hot power lead in the 
control box. 

Before some of you have a hissy, there was an 8th lead which I didn't mention 
because it was a green ground lead and did not enter the motor cover but was 
pulled out of the harness and connected to a grounding lug outside the motor 
frame. This, of course, will be replaced during reassembly.

I guess the moral of this story is never give up, and don't cut the leads too 
short until you have looked inside. You might find a fuse!

Darn, now I have to find another source of black anodized hardware!

73 and thanks again for all the suggestions.

John,  W4AWM