"Jeff Liebermann" wrote in message
...

Yep. When I do something wrong, I'm consistent. As I previously
ranted, when I find one bad cap of a type and value, I replace *ALL*
the caps of the same type and value. My time is more expensive than
the extra caps.

Yah. Amazing you didn't have a chassis full of oily linguine there.

Actually, the machine ran quite nicely for a day or two the first time
I put the caps in backwards. Eventually, it started acting strangely
so I retreived it from the customers. All 4 caps were bulging. So, I
replaced all 4 caps again, putting them in backwards again. That's
when I noticed that they were getting hot, which prompted my initial
Usenet posting. I too would have expected at least a small explosion,
but nothing happened.

Interisting it ran at all.

It is easy to get into a bad pattern of doing things. A coworker and I were
repairing some flouresence lights in the plant. Got to one and put in new
tubes and it did not come on. This did not phase us as we often will get a
bad tube or so as there are thousands in the plant we often will replace
over 100 tubes in a day. Sometimes we get bad tubes so put in another set
and still no light. Decided it was the ballast, so replaced that. Still no
light. Knew we had power as there were about 20 other lights in the room.
Replaced the ballast 2 more times and sitll no light. This ballast had been
replaced before as there were several places where the wires were spliced
together with wire nuts. One would thing with only 8 wires it would be easy
to get it going. Got time to go home. I went up the next day by myself
and decided to try one more time. This time I removed all the wires and
instead of just going by the color of the wires, actually trace the wiring
out. This time it lite just fine.

What we were doing wrong was just matching the wire colors and as it had
been replaced before the colors did not go to the same place.