That $30 capacitor tester from Amazon saved my butt on a 10 year old fridge

Compressor was humming and tripping the overload after 20 minutes, and after my multi-meter showed nothing wrong I grabbed the cheap ESR tester out of desperation and found a run cap reading 12 uF when it should be 45 uF, swapped it out and the unit is cooling perfect now, anyone else had a bad cap pass the basic ohm check like that?

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anna56724d ago

I read a forum post last week where a guy said the exact same thing, that his meter showed fine but the cap was actually dead. And I had a similar thing happen with a washing machine, not a fridge, but the motor would start then stop after a few minutes. The ohm reading looked perfect, I even checked it twice. But yeah, the ESR tester caught it at like half its rated value. That little tool is honestly one of those things you don't think you need until you use it once, then you wonder how you ever got by without it. The cheap ones work fine too, no need to drop big money on a fancy brand.