Kato GP38-2 / GP50 ESU loksound select micro install

[Steveruger45]

Hi Peteski, Yep, everything was the correctly oriented.   I am somewhat methodical and deliberate, so I soldered all the positive sides to one wire first, then I soldered the all the  negative sides to another wire. Double and triple checked polarity alignment.  I placed the caps about an inch apart on this "cap-ladder", for want of a better description.  The positive lead to battery was connected first then the negative.  Then the fireworks. WOW.   I have never seen a cap blow before, Luckily I had my glasses and my magnifier head band thing on so no personal damage done and a future model project saved from a meltdown.

[MK]

Peteski is a genius! 

[Jbub]

All hail @peteski  Genius electronics tech and king of the children's page faq section

 

[Steveruger45]

I for one second that.  After more testing last night on the rest of my dubious quality Chinese unbranded caps, all 220uf x 25v, I have had only one more failure, which occurred after about 10 mins on the 18v battery.  As Pete suggested, the "burn-in period" was 2 hours.   So, in short, the failure rate is about 20%.  Acceptable considering the price I guess, and that my NCE system will not load these up beyond 13.8v and probably less than that as the 13.8 volts is what the NCE wall wart is rated at.

[peteski]

I'm glad that I was able to assist in preventing a disaster.

What I find humorous here is that all the post praising me have up-votes, but my actual posts which described the helpful burn-in procedure have babkus (that is zero, zilch, nada). Not that I'm fishing for votes or anything - I'm just continuing to observe the flawed voting system.  Someone will probably go and up-vote my post now, but again, that is not my point.  For some newbies reading this that haven't seen my rants, I'm opposed to the the "respect" rating system is implemented.