Capacitor equivalence help

Thread Starter

jtron1

Joined Mar 22, 2020
3
I have a bunch of track light fixtures that are all blowing out capacitors, and the manufacturer doesn't exist anymore so I'm trying to repair them myself. I'm having difficulty finding replacements for the exact capacitor, and am too inexperienced to know what range of ratings variance I can safely use. I would appreciate this community's help.

The exact markings are:
224K ©
250VMPE


They're that brown/red type that I take to be film capacitors, with straight leads spaced at about 1.5mm. The body of the capacitor is about 1.6mm wide by 0.8mm tall by 0.4mm thickness. The form factor is important as there's very little room to spare in the body of this fixture. In case it matters/helps, the fixture is a 50W halogen MR16 track light where the transformer is in each fixture rather than on the track, and I live in the US so I'm assuming the track is 120v.

My hope is to find a suitable equivalent where I don't have to either buy 1000 of them (I need maybe 20) and ideally where I don't have to wait a month for them to arrive from China. I don't mind paying a premium in exchange for better quality ones and/or easier availability. If anyone can suggest either a specific alternative or tell me what range of specs I can safely search within, I'd greatly appreciate it.
 

MrChips

Joined Oct 2, 2009
30,702
Photos of your installation would be very helpful.
There must be a reason why the capacitors are blowing.
Do you have a circuit schematic that you can share with us?
 

Thread Starter

jtron1

Joined Mar 22, 2020
3
Photos of your installation would be very helpful.
There must be a reason why the capacitors are blowing.
Do you have a circuit schematic that you can share with us?
Thanks for your quick response! Likely they're blowing because the fixtures are 7 years old and cheap. I don't have any kind of schematics as I just bought these as a normal consumer a long time ago. Images follow. There are two of the same capacitor in each side of the circuit board, so the images show a damaged and undamaged one from the same fixture.

REMOVED, DAMAGED CAPACITOR

1.jpg


UNDAMAGED, IDENTICAL CAPACITOR IN OTHER SIDE OF CIRCUIT BOARD

2.jpg

WHOLE FIXTURE CIRCUIT BOARD WITH DAMAGED CAPACITOR REMOVED

3.jpg

I should note that the damaged capacitor in the third picture is upside-down/flipped relative to how it was installed.
 

Ohmlandia

Joined Mar 2, 2020
32
Maybe these caps would last longer if they were X-rated? Are they connected to the mains? The existing ones do not appear to have any X-rated symbology on them. Perhaps the replacements should! If there is enough physical space to fit them in, I would definitely use them. Downside: they probably cost more and might be larger too!
 
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