Bad Caps / Faulty Electrolyte

[VinceHaworth]

I am a PC technician and I have been finding faulty electrolitic caps on motherboards with alarming regularity these days. The caps were made from 2001 onwards in Thailand and have ended up in motherboards from most (if not all) manufacturers. This is a worldwide problem with the caps.
http://www.badcaps.net/

The problem has persisted due to the motherboard manufacturers using up their old stock of components and turning a blind eye to the follow up faults. The Japanese caps seem to be of a better quality.

Now here is the alarming bit - the caps were sold to, and fitted by, other companies making consumer electronics. Question is, how many of them are in RC gear? My older futaba gear has 'made in Japan' labels but the newest futaba gear has 'made in Taiwan' on it. :eek:

Anybody out there done any repairs to RC gear and found lots of faulty caps?

[Mr.RC-CAM]

I have replaced the Power Supply caps on a couple of my motherboards due to this problem. I have also seen some Panasonic consumer products with the bad caps. But, so far, there does not seem to be an epidemic of cap issues in R/C gear.

I don't regularly repair R/C stuff, but I have seen destroyed caps. They were always victims of power reversal or excess motor ripple. R/C'ers tend to publicly scream if there is a failure trend, so if this was a significant problem you would be reading about it here. :)

[Rodney]

We have also witnessed a great increase in the failure of capacitors on computer mother boards. The defective ones are rather easy to spot, they usually have a bulged case (the top is rounded upward) and/or a brownish leakage sometimes evident at the lower end. Have not seen any on RC equipment yet though.

[Scoobyvroom]

Speaking of leaking caps, it is a known problem among 1990-1994 Mitsubishi Eclipses, Eagle Talons, and Plymouth Lasers. The ECu has three caps that all start to go bad after about 8-9 years.. All the sudden the car won't start and things don't work. Pretty easy to replace. There are tell tail signs they are going like a clicking of the fuel pump relay and others...

Just an FYI

Chris

I belive the ECU is made in Japan...

[Gary Warner]

Mitsubishi TV's in the 1994-1996 range had serious problems with leaking caps. It was traced to a supplier who did not adhere to the reflow temperature parameters. The seals on the caps were damaged during assembly and failed as the sets aged from 5 years on. We still see them. Most are not fixable because of the extent of cap leakage and acid damage.

In all fairness, many manufactures had the same problems. Mitsubishi was just a notable bad case manufacturer.

Gary
www.yorktv.com (http://www.yorktv.com)
(finding bad caps EVERY day!)
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[50+AirYears]

The only leaking electrolytic I've seen in about the last 15 years was on a Hitec Focus 3. The cap is located on the small PC board on the on-off switch. Luckily the tranny stopped working and I opened the case and found the leakage before any real damage occured. There was only a small amount of etching on the switch and encoder pc boards. I was able to clean everything off with about 40 minutes scrubbing with a toothbrush and good old Isopropyl alcohol. Next step will be to pull the cap and replace it.

[VinceHaworth]

I am glad to know its not affecting RC gear. :)

It is an epidemic fault affecting many motherboards across the campus that I work on. :rolleyes: