"BOEING377" wrote in message
...
original failure in this one appears to be a blown electolytic

I swear, blown electrolytic caps account for about 80% of the failures I
have
seen in marine electronics. Wonder what it would take to make ones that
are
more reliable? I once had a Wood Freman 500 autopilot fail on a tuna voat
halfway between Midway Island and Japan.
Had to take some electrolytics from a crew man's casette deck to fix it.
Given
the choice of hand steering his watches, he gladly sacrificed the caps.

This has been a chronic problem over the past two years or so, especially in
the computer, radio, and television market. Some dope stole the formula for
the electrolyte (incomplete of course....!) and took it to a competing
company in TW, who promptly flooded the market with literally millions of
defective capacitors. (symptoms include bulging, leaking, *and* blowing-up)
As far as I know, the only companies willing to accept responsibility for
this hardware failure has been IBM and ABIT. If you can positively trace
this to bad caps, get the manufacturer involved, they may stand behind their
product.

Hopefully, none of these defective capacitors have made it into any aircraft
electronics. for further information, see article at:
http://www.nepatoday.com/cfforum/pri...m=93&Topic=365