A question about condensers

[BuxBitza]

Do condensers have a shelf life or are they like points in that they don't start to die until they are put into service?

[IronheadVic]

depends on how they are stored. due to their construction as long as they were quality pieces and are kept dry and cool, it could have a lifetime shelf life. Aluminum foil layers around wax paper layers.

Modern electrolytic capacitors are known to have poor shelf life (7 years) unless they are 'used' or 'charged up' for a short period. 24 hours once a year. This can increase the shelf life over 20 years.

But for an automotive condensor(capacitor) the shelf life is much longer with no maintenance if stored properly, beause of its constuction.

[Davestune]

Caps can be "formed" brought up on a variac , I use to do it on all caps for vintage amps I built and worked on, Yours would be DC
What it does is form the cap ,in other words foil construction either oil or wax caps it prevents hot spots and forms dielectric content even through out the cap. ( it stops short from one layer to another layer foil to foil....

[farmall]

Is this roughly how you reformed caps?

http://www.qsl.net/g3oou/reform.html

[ridgerunner1965]

idk bout shelf life. but just had a condensor fail. it was on the bike about 8 months. who knows how old it was.

shovel would break up when giving it gas but idle perfect. ran fine just off idle but when i gassed into it would break up.

cleaned carb bout 6 times. replaced condensor and now runs fine.

[Davestune]

Is this roughly how you reformed caps?

http://www.qsl.net/g3oou/reform.html

yes I use variac when I did this

[IronheadVic]

Not that anyone cares at this point, ha ha, but the way we did it was to power up all of the spare Foxboro H-Line Controllers we had in the warehouse for 24 hours once a year. They were 120VAC powered modules.

http://www.cwnuclear.com/brands/scientech/instruments-and-controls/reverse-engineering/default.aspx

[farmall]

I'm always interested in anything to do with electronic mortality management. No backyard nuke plant for me, but knowledge is good.

[BuxBitza]

depends on how they are stored. due to their construction as long as they were quality pieces and are kept dry and cool, it could have a lifetime shelf life. Aluminum foil layers around wax paper layers.

Modern electrolytic capacitors are known to have poor shelf life (7 years) unless they are 'used' or 'charged up' for a short period. 24 hours once a year. This can increase the shelf life over 20 years.

But for an automotive condensor(capacitor) the shelf life is much longer with no maintenance if stored properly, beause of its constuction.

Thank you for that info.