Hy, this is my first time posting here.
I'm having trouble identifying what seems like a capacitor in an opamp board (some sort of amplifier/comparator for a fuel meter in a car).

It have EC6 9850 written on it and this doesn't seem like a capacitor code that I know. Is it not a capacitor? For me it is filtering the signal for the meter, but I'm quite confused analyzing this circuitry.

 

Welcome to AAC.

Is there anything on the other side of the cap? That is a resin dipped ceramic axial capacitor and the photographed side shows manufacturing and date codes. I would expect a value on the other side.

 

Welcome to AAC.

Is there anything on the other side of the cap? That is a resin dipped ceramic axial capacitor and the photographed side shows manufacturing and date codes. I would expect a value on the other side.

Nothing else on it... I thought it was ceramic but didn't recognized the package at all... The EC6 really seems like manufacturing. I removed it from circuit and measured 98nF across it (on more than one of those on the board), so the 98 of the code really seems like the value and the 50 is a multiplier of sorts. I thought it could be something like 985 and the 0 is something else, but that would give a value of 9800nF wouldn't it?

I just wanted to check if the component is ok, but if they all measure kind of the same... I'll assume it's fine.

 

If 98 is 98nF then 50 could be 50V

 

98nF is not a standard manufactured capacitance value.

 

98nF is not a standard manufactured capacitance value.

You're right, I haven't even thought about that.
I did a small research on the topic of standard values (which is quite interesting and I never even stopped to think about that) and found out that the standard is called E-series of preferred values and is based on steps on a logarithmic scale. So you have E3,E6, E12... and so forth.
And on E96 and E192 there's a 9.88 value.
So I was thinking... What if the EC6 on the top of the component is not a manufacturer code but actually a hint that it is based on an different E-series scale?
I really don't know what's going on with this little thing.

 

If 98 is 98nF then 50 could be 50V

50V would make sense for the voltages of this circuit.

 

By the way, I have replaced other capacitors on this board and put it back in the car. It is functioning fine as it seems the problem was with some aluminum electrolytic capacitors that lost capacity with age. This is just to inform that these component identification is no longer necessary, although I'm really curious about this coding and value thing.

 

By the way, I have replaced other capacitors on this board and put it back in the car. It is functioning fine as it seems the problem was with some aluminum electrolytic capacitors that lost capacity with age. This is just to inform that these component identification is no longer necessary, although I'm really curious about this coding and value thing.

Electrolytic cans are the most likely components to be bad. They really shouldn’t be used except that there is nothing that is as cheap and cheerful. Still, any components that depend on liquids are doomed eventually. Much worse if they experience heating.

I don’t know why they don’t have a value on that ceramic cap. As @MrChips points out, 98nF is not a standard value—so it would be surprising if they were labeled that way and measured so precisely that. It would imply the cap’s value was critical to the circuit which seems odd.

Sorry I can ’t help more. I am familiar with that style of cap but expect one side to have manufacturing and date codes while the other has value. If that was a date code it would mean 50th week of 1998. Are there any other indications of date of manufacture?

 

Electrolytic cans are the most likely components to be bad. They really shouldn’t be used except that there is nothing that is as cheap and cheerful. Still, any components that depend on liquids are doomed eventually. Much worse if they experience heating.

I don’t know why they don’t have a value on that ceramic cap. As @MrChips points out, 98nF is not a standard value—so it would be surprising if they were labeled that way and measured so precisely that. It would imply the cap’s value was critical to the circuit which seems odd.

Sorry I can ’t help more. I am familiar with that style of cap but expect one side to have manufacturing and date codes while the other has value. If that was a date code it would mean 50th week of 1998. Are there any other indications of date of manufacture?

Oh... A date marking would be a much simpler explanation. I think you're right.
The 50th week of 1998 would be at the end of the year, this is from a 1999 car. So, a close match.
It would just mean that those numbers have nothing to do with capacity nor voltage.
It would mean that those are probably 100nF standard ceramic and I measured 98nF which is still in tolerance. The only coincidence is that all three of those in this specific board are measuring precisely 98nF, but that's not all that uncommon.