Document Title: [My recap experience.html (html file)]

From: "Bret Pehrson" 
Subject: My recap experience
Date: Saturday, July 15, 2000 3:07 PM

Thought I'd pass on my first recap experience:

I have a Donkey Kong Jr. that I picked up a couple of weeks ago, and the
CRT picture has been dying ever since.  The problems that I had were
that the picture would take approx. 5 minutes to appear, and even then,
it was very dark and red was about gone.

I picked up a Zanen cap kit for the monitor (Sanyo).  All said, it took
about two hours to do install the caps.  Second time around should cut
that time in half, at least.

I discharged the monitor using the aligator clip & screwdriver
technique.  There was no charge.

Next, I pulled out the entire CRT and chassis, too much of a hassle to
remove just the board.  Even on the workbench, I still had wires
(soldered to the board), so it was a little tedious to work on the
board.

The hardest part was locating the caps.  I was doing everthing from the
backside (to avoid flipping the board and potentially breaking a
component or wire).  I spent 20 minutes trying to locate one cap -- it
turns out it was unmarked on the bottom side! I won't make that mistake
again.

I did find one visibly hosed cap (C408) that had the bottom popping out.

Slapped the monitor back in the cabinet, powered it up, and 100%
rejuvenated picture!  What a world of difference a new kit can make!

-- Misc details --

Here are some details that I learned while installing the kit:

 - Clean the board.  Lots of greasy dust.

 - Write down a list of each and every connector that you disconnect,
screw removed, etc.  Makes the a real good reassembly checklist to make
sure that you don't miss anything.

 - Use a nice new tip on your soldering iron.  Makes a world of
difference.

 - I got tired of hunting throught the little bag of caps for each one
that I was working on.  So I got a piece of foam and stuck the caps
leads in it, with the farads and voltages facing me.  MUCH EASIER!

 - Check the values of the old capacitor w/ the new one.  They should
match.  In some cases, I noticed that the voltages were different (orig.
160, new 250).  I've heard that this is intended, and is ok.

 - Don't clip the legs of the newly installed caps until the end.

 - The short leg of the cap is the negative.  Make sure that you install
in the correct polarity.

 - Double-check the polarity just before clipping the legs.  Remeber,
short is negative.

 - Triple-check the polarity from the top of the board.  On the Sanyo,
there was a bar on the circuit board indicating the negative.