Can anybody explain how I have gone my entire life working around household, industrial and marine equipment, and never replaced a capacitor on a motor, yet it seems to be a routine failure we talk about here? Am I just lucky? Or is there something going on? Now to be fair, very few of the electric motors I have used around boats have been AC motors, so it might just be a sample too small to give useful data.
Is there something special about the electrical supply characteristics or the general environment on board that is causing this? Maybe salt air getting into the capacitor and shorting out the plates?
For what it is worth, I haven't had a failure of a capacitor on Harmonie--yet. (I am sure just that just jinxed at least one of them!) On the other had, we hardly ever use any of our AC motors, so it might just be a usage factor.
Bill Kinney
SM160, Harmonie
Boston, Mass
