TomR wrote:
A friend of mine was asked to repair a Harbor Breeze ceiling fan. He
was told that the pull chain for the fan switch had pulled out and
was missing. When he opened it up, it was true that the chain for the
fan switch had pulled out. It's a 3-way 4-wire fan switch and he
bought a replacement switch but hasn't put it in yet.

But, when he opened up the ceiling fan he found that the capacitor had
burned and melted. Here are 3 photos (in .jpg and URL link form) of
the damaged capacitor:

http://i45.tinypic.com/j9o5g5.jpg
http://i47.tinypic.com/102jry9.jpg
http://i50.tinypic.com/kdk7l2.jpg

http://tinypic.com/r/j9o5g5/6
http://tinypic.com/r/102jry9/6
http://tinypic.com/r/kdk7l2/6

It turns out that finding Harbor Breeze support or parts through the
manufacturer is apparently a virtual impossibility. The Harbor Breeze
ceiling fans are sold at Lowes, and Lowes has some parts such as
switches, but Lowes does not sell capacitors.

We found at least two online third party sources that sell ceiling fan
capacitors, and my friend just ordered the replacement capacitor. It
should arrive next week.

I didn't even know that ceiling fans had a capacitor in them, and I
don't know what the capacitor does. We just saw the burnt and melted
part and figured out through some Internet searching that it is a
capacitor.
My question a

1) Given the burnt and melted condition of the capacitor as shown in
the photos, is it possible (or likely) that the ceiling fan motor
itself is also bad?;

and,

2) What does the capacitor do; and do capacitors sometimes just burn
and melt like this one did without that being caused by something
else such as a bad motor?

Thanks for everyone's help with this. Here's the final outcome.

I ordered the capacitor online for about $13.50 plus $5 shipping. The
person I was helping with this project put it in yesterday. He also
replaced the old pull chain switch that the chain had pulled out of and was
bad.

The capacitor worked like a charm and the fan motor now works perfectly.

Regarding the switch -- at first he thought he did something wrong with the
switch because the lights didn't work. The he figured out that all of the
bulbs were burnt out -- duh. He thinks that maybe the bulbs got damaged
will moving the fan back and forth from his shop etc. He replaced the bulbs
and all is well.