FW: [Hallicrafters] Recapping Hallicrafters

[Bill Gerhold]

Exploding electrolytics, was one of my favorite past times prior to getting
my ham ticket of course.  A friend of mine lived with his grandfather who
had a TV repair store.  The grandfather passed on and we had the run of the
store.  Imagine all the neat stuff in this place.  Walls of tubes, caps etc.

Enough of that though, we discovered that if you take a piece of zip cord
and connected it to a low voltage single can electrolytic and plugged it
into the AC socket, it would eventually explode like a bomb.  We destroyed
lots of stuff this way and it was especially fun when you put them in
upturned bottles.

Hey did I ever tell you how we got rid of the rats in the basement with a
neon sign transformer?  Later maybe.

K2WH

-----Original Message-----
From: hallicrafters-bounces at mailman.qth.net
[mailto:hallicrafters-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of k0ewu at juno.com
Sent: Tuesday, July 12, 2005 4:49 PM
To: radiocompass at yahoo.com
Cc: Hallicrafters at mailman.qth.net; cnicolsen at msn.com
Subject: Re: [Hallicrafters] Recapping Hallicrafters

Harken ye back to the day of wet electrolytics, a tall round can,
aluminum, the neg.
side. The positive was an electrode in a bath of electrolyte, a water
solution.

I was working in a gamble store repairing radios after school-- high
school,
The farmer that brought it in said it souded like his coffee pot.
Shure did, I turned it on and it played for a bit, started to gurgle and
then
  pow!!  the lid of the can blew a hole in the top of the cabinet like a
12 gauge shell would, about 2 in diameter.  from that day forth i have
always replaced a wet cap with a more modern one.           Before
applying power.

jack


1
On Tue, 12 Jul 2005 12:18:52 -0700 (PDT) Mike Everette
<radiocompass at yahoo.com> writes:
> 
> 
> --- "Clayton L. Nicolsen" <cnicolsen at msn.com> wrote:
> 
> > "One mistake some make is replacing electrolytic
> > caps with one of a higher
> > voltage, this will accelerate the aging of the cap.
> > 
> REST ASSURED!  THIS IS PURE BOVINE
> BYPRODUCTS!!!!!!!!!!!
> 
> Sounds like something dreamed up by some propellerhead
> whizbang, raised on a diet of germanium and silicon
> (especially when made into computers)....
> 
> There is NO danger of jeopardizing a cap by using it
> at less than rated working voltage.
> 
> On the other hand, if one subjects some capacitors,
> especially electrolytics, to ABOVE rated voltage, the
> effect can and often does resemble Mount St. Helens. 
> I once saw a can-type filter cap in a tube-type mobile
> radio explode, and throw its guts 10 feet straight up
> to stick on the ceiling of the shop (it was in an old
> garage service bay).  It was LOUD, too.  
> 
> And that is the absolute truth.
> 
> 73
> 
> Mike
> WA4DLF
> 
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