Capacitor replacement

The OP's question was basically answered early on, a few times.

The best part is how many run caps now say "370/440" .

Not too long ago simply putting 440 was good enough, but I guess it's not anymore. Pretty soon the wires and top of the cap will be color coded too with different size quick disconnects.

The voltage needs to match or exceed the spec by the motor manufacturer.

My point was, they can't just put 440 because apparently a lot of people think they can't use a 440 on something that calls for 370.

Cheap junk.

Caps used to last almost forever. I have had equipment that is 40 years old and never replaced a cap. Now they only last a few years. I guess when they took the "good PCBs" out they don't last anymore.

Or maybe it is a rating issue. The new caps seem to be smaller and lighter for a given rating like they took 1/2 the guts out of them.

Typical arsonist. She lit a fire and ran away.

Nothing is made the way it used to be. Maybe heat contributes to early cap failure. Rheem/Ruud used to use grey plastic body capacitors where only the posts were in the electrical cabinet. The body was inside where the fan is. So when the condenser was running it would constantly have air moving across it. They always lasted a long time. The downside was the ratings information getting worn off from being out in the weather.

Another complicating factor is efficiency. New stuff has high efficiency because of tighter tolerances and more complex controls.

The unfortunate side effect of that is that things wear out faster because of the added complexity and quicker loss of important tolerances.

When your specs were just, "make fire, have heat", there's just not anywhere near as much to go wrong

it is more that there are more parts involved so they make those parts cheaper to meet that price point. it is that we have been conditioned to thik if you are paying more you must be getting ripped off, not that you're getting more combined with institutional customers havcing policies that they have to pay the lest for something without any sort of meaningful rules to evaluate if they 2 prices are actually for the same thing.

I wasn't really speaking directly about compressors, but more so just equipment as a whole.

I deal mostly with pumps so in my world for example there's still plenty of 80 year old pumps still out there running with maybe 50-60% efficiency. A brand new pump doing the same duty point should be able to get 70-80% efficiency, but that's because of better hydraulic design, better tolerances on wear rings, that sort of thing. I wouldn't expect a new pump to last 60-80 years unless a building goes out of there way to very carefully maintain it.

For controls, a properly sized NEMA starter is an overbuilt tank that will run for 30-40 years easy if it's not abused and if you pair that with a pressure reducing valve on the pump discharge you get a regulated output. But you waste plenty of energy with that setup, It's like driving with the gas pedal floored and using the breaks to slow yourself down. The modern control method is a VFD, which while great at saving energy because then you just run the pump at the speed you actually need it. But I also generally expect them to last around 7-15 years depending on how harsh of an environment they're in.

you can build anything

Does the consumer want to pay the price?

No

No way

HELL No

We live in a Walmart society

Cheap

Cheaper

Cheapest

i would disagree on cars. after about 10 years of road salt the cars of the mid 80's and before were done. now it is pretty common to see cars that are 15-20 years old. between what used to be an $8k car costing $25k and the better corrosion protection and the difficulty in actually finding a car to buy you find people foxing stuff that they would have scrapped the car for 20 years ago.

isn't that what i said? some fords were still doing it in the 90's

i'm pretty sure all of the compressors are good in the 4 dehumidifiers in my dehumidifier raveyard. maybe i should just get a roll of acr tubing ane make my own coils like david allen. or get a 30 year old ac evaporator and cut appropriate slabs out of it and braze on interconnections to the cut end.

Channell is "@frostschieldhvac"

Video is '"Home Depot selling HVAC Parts"

No you said after 10 years in the 1980s and before.

it usually is only possible with a start cap and even then only with a potential relay start circuit(or bad start components). with a run cap or a centrifugal start switch the motor is shorted across the cap at dc

Personally, I find a typical CAT I gas water heater to be the most dangerous thing sold in home centers that should not. However, IF a retail store is going to sell run caps, they would do themselves well to require the purchaser to sign a written warning about the hazard of severe shock.

Amen, brother @ChrisJ .

And just for chuckles — if any of you really want to find out what getting truly zapped (but not electrocuted — that's different!) try the main power supply capacitor on a tube type high fidelity amplifier or PA amp (think around 10,000 mfd at, typically, 400 to 800 volts) or for real jollies the plate terminal on a cathode ray television tube… not so many mfd (I forget the spec.) but that 10,000 plus volts will wake you up right now…

And yes, your dimwit scribe has tried them both…

for those of you that don't know what you're looking at, this is the power supply. it makes the various voltages with a voltage divider because they didn't have solid state voltage regulators or zener diodes:

selenium rectifiers existed long before germanium and silicon rectifiers. they were common in post war or so tube equipment. circuits were designed to keep the current reasonable within a fairly wide voltage range because it is far more complex to make a tube voltage regulator than a semiconductor regulator. though it is shown as a single diode there, selenium rectifiers were a stack of several rectifiers to get the needed reverse voltage rating so they had junction voltages of several to 10 or so volts.