Aircooled VW South Africa

we have all asked "Why Condensers / capacitors keep dying" especially on aircooled VW's

Well as said before, its the cheap way of making them..

They are made to break, as no electrical engineer would design an component like this in this way.

In the "good old days" these inner coil of foil had a wire of thin foil spot welded to the coil on both sides, the one would be spot welded inside the cap, the other would be looped around the lid seal and welder to the wire connection.

The new ones are just pressed against the tin on one side with an spring washer spacer and the other a dome cap with wire on one side for your connection to points.

The touching ends, start to spark and carbon up, which effects the speed capability of the cap, giving a number of issues other then total open circuit.

Have bought one from Bosch, at R230.00 no less, but it was made in Turkey, and it looks to be of the same construction.

Will fit it to the next dead cap replacement and see if it also dies.

It would appear that with a smaller load coil, it may hold, but with the heavy Bosch coil we need to use, it gets burnt up and useless after 700 Km.

That seams to be the mileage I get per Cap.

Here are a few Photo's, please see the carbon build up.

Herman

retro - email me your address.
I've just received stock of those units I was talking about and offered to have you trial.

I also bought one of the Bosch Turkeys, but have not installed it yet. Will these also live a short life?

Please give feedback on your findings.

I believe there is more to this problem than just the condenser. Something else is wrong in the system.

Why do some continuously have blowing condensers in one vehicle but others can drive 1000’s of km with no issues?

I don’t have this issue. I admit, you do get the odd bad one, but most of my vehicles utilize one and I don’t have them popping every 500km.

Some time ago, I was continuously having ignition issues on my one 75 bay, for 3 to 4 months I was swapping condensers, only to figure out it was actually the after market rev counter causing a short.

I’m sure possible earthing problems or coil issues could be to blame for condenser issues?