"Joe" wrote in message
...
I have the above woodturning lathe and it's been acting strangely all of a
sudden. The complete sequence of events.

- Lathe runs fine in the garage/shop, although not much time put on it.
(bought it new)
- All of a sudden, every time I try to turn it on, it trips the GFI it's
plugged into
- I use an extension cord to plug it into a non-gfi, and it works fine,
for a (very) little while
- Now, when i turn it on, (it's a capacitor start/capacitor run motor), it
doesn't kick over from the start capacitor to the run capacitor which is
usually accompanied by a definite "click" and a smoother run after it
kicks over.

questions:

Is this what happens when a capacitor (the start) goes bad? Or is there
something in the kickover that can/has gone bad?
The motor has very little run time, this seems very odd to have happened
already.
would the bad/going bad capacitor cause the gfi to trip every time?

Any help would be appreciated.

The click is a centrifugal switch, normally. If the motor does not come up
to speed the switch won't trip. If the contacts (points) are fused, it
won't trip either. This can be remedied by cleaning the points with some
400 sandpaper. WITH THE THING UNPLUGGED AND A MINUTE OR TWO FOR COMPLETE
CAPACITOR BLEED.

Not sure if this is your problem, however. Have you given it a good blast
or two of air? The GFI trips if there's a short. Could be you've got some
gunk in there. I'd try that first. Not the kind of thing you want to do,
bypass a GFI. It's a safety device, after all.