[Milsurplus] Oil filled capacitors and PCBs in our equipment

Reuben Popp reuben.popp at gmail.com
Fri Dec 1 12:05:00 EST 2023


My apologies to everyone for spamming the list so much lately.  I'm trying
to do my research before asking the list, but sometimes my google-fu isn't
exactly fruitful.

Anyway...  Oil filled caps in our gear.  Was it standard to denote whether
they contained PCBs in them, or is it a safe assumption that ANY oil filled
cap with a manufacture date before 1980 is suspect?  As most of those are
likely out of spec and leaky, is there ANY way to open the cap, dispose of
the contents at an EPA approved site and then restuff the shell with new
components?  Or is my only recourse to decouple the old cap from the
circuit and then place newer ones under the chassis (or try to hide them,
etc).  If my only option is the latter, once decoupled from the circuit,
what's the likelihood that it will actually start leaking (as in, the
oil).  One would think that would be fairly miniscule, but what with some
of these going on 80+ years old, it's a crap shoot at this point, no?

Thanks again
Reuben
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