I just created an account here to thank everyone for this great repair thread.

I have a Wine Enthusiast 48 Bottle Dual Zone Wine Refridgerator purchased 3/27/2014 Model #272-48-02-51 with PCB100817F4 FX100-1B (Is this a FX101? board or is this something slightly different?)

I noticed one side stopped working and opened up the back of the unit to see if it were just dirty. One board had the red and green LED lit, the other side had nothing. I switched the boards from right to left and was able to figure out one board was bad and one was good.

I was all ready to order a replacement board from ebay until I found this site. I am not an engineer by any means but my brother who designed pinball machines for a living at Bally gifted me a pinball machine when I turned 7 years old. He would not fix the machine for me, but would tell me how to fix it. Long story short, at a pretty young age I became very efficient at soldering.

I saw this posting about "C8" and when I looked at the 47uF I realized WAIT! that's what I put in my guitars... and yes I went into my bag of tricks and found an orange drop 47uF cap. Desoldered the C8 popped this in, powered it up and voila it's working again! ( realize higher voltages are okay as long as they match the uF rating )

I will go ahead and order the full plethora of caps and redo both boards, but I had to see if I could get some instant gratification and indeed I did!

I compared the values on my board and they are consistent with the recommendations here (Thanks again for such a great detailed post) and I'm ordering parts to rebuild both boards today.

I did have one question, I re-read all these posts here and couldn't figure out one thing. Does changing everything help make the unit more efficient and get back to more cooling?

-Pat

 

I have a Wine Enthusiast 48 Bottle Dual Zone Wine Refridgerator purchased 3/27/2014 Model #272-48-02-51 with PCB100817F4 FX100-1B (Is this a FX101? board or is this something slightly different?)

I saw this posting about "C8" and when I looked at the 47uF I realized WAIT! that's what I put in my guitars... and yes I went into my bag of tricks and found an orange drop 47uF cap. Desoldered the C8 popped this in, powered it up and voila it's working again! ( realize higher voltages are okay as long as they match the uF rating )

I did have one question, I re-read all these posts here and couldn't figure out one thing. Does changing everything help make the unit more efficient and get back to more cooling?

-Pat

Welcome to AAC!

Congratulations on being able to get it working again by just replacing C8.

By the statistics on this thread alone it would appear that C8 is the #1 culprit for failing wine coolers.
You got it working, great. Personally, I would let sleeping dogs lie and go with what you've got. There is nothing to suggest that any other components need replacing or doing so would improve efficiency.

 

Yet another success story.
Cooler with two power supplies marked PCB120102K3 MP-011. Upper supply worked fine but the lower had some strange oscillation problem. The green LED was flashing - one second on and one second off. The red LED toggled between bright and dim. Temperatures shown on the front were also unstable for the lower cooler. Replaced all caps that were sitting close to any type of heat source. Kept the legs of the caps long and bent them away from the heat sources as far as possible. I expect the upper power supply to fail in a similar manner. Perhaps I'll replace the caps on that one too.

Thank you all for sharing.

-P

 

One more success story here. C8 replaced and it is back purring like a kitty!
47uf 25v 2.5mm - if you want to order - I borrowed one from a fellow amp repair guy.

 

My Wine Enthusiast 16-bottle wine fridge with two FX101b boards had the same problem. I decided to try to just replace the 47uF C8 caps, as those have been implicated repeatedly in this thread. Top board fired up, but the bottom did not. I unplugged the TEC, and the fan started and LEDs lit. Plugged the TEC back in and Ka-POW! I felt a stinging pain on my hand and looked down to find the aluminum can of the new capacitor lying on the floor, intact and pristine. I didn’t have another cap handy, so I examined the two I’d removed. One looked damaged, so I decided to reinstall the other in the lower board just to see if it would work. It did, and has been running for a couple of hours. I’m assuming I just happened to get a bad cap with an internal short that heated up and vaporized the liquid inside, turning the aluminum shell into a little rocket. Very exciting!

 

Picked up a "works great" wine fridge that did not work great at all -- it didn't even power on! Upon finding this thread, I decided to replace the C8 cap with a big fat overprovisioned one (63V, 125C). As a total [de]soldering n00b it was a bit rough, but I managed to replace the C8 cap and it powered on!!! Felt like a million bucks. But here's the thing: the next day, I realized after closing it all up, I forgot to trim the long C8 cap legs and was worried about it touching something else over time, so re-opened it back up to do so and afterwards it no longer powered on. Tried desoldering and resolding the C8 cap several times (it was consistently too loose with the trimmed legs), but nothing worked, so I likely ruined the circuit board and/or the C8 cap from excessive heat. I really didn't want to buy a Chinese replacement board without a peltier fuse for $50 and wait weeks for it to arrive, but at the last minute I found a cheaper option locally under an alternative search term. So if you don't want to go through all this ballyhoo, just buy a replacement PCB from Newair:

 

My Wine Enthusiast 16-bottle wine fridge with two FX101b boards had the same problem. I decided to try to just replace the 47uF C8 caps, as those have been implicated repeatedly in this thread. Top board fired up, but the bottom did not. I unplugged the TEC, and the fan started and LEDs lit. Plugged the TEC back in and Ka-POW! I felt a stinging pain on my hand and looked down to find the aluminum can of the new capacitor lying on the floor, intact and pristine. I didn’t have another cap handy, so I examined the two I’d removed. One looked damaged, so I decided to reinstall the other in the lower board just to see if it would work. It did, and has been running for a couple of hours. I’m assuming I just happened to get a bad cap with an internal short that heated up and vaporized the liquid inside, turning the aluminum shell into a little rocket. Very exciting!

it would also explode id the cap was installed reverse polarity, or under voltage

 

I just created an account here to thank everyone for this great repair thread.

I have a Wine Enthusiast 48 Bottle Dual Zone Wine Refridgerator purchased 3/27/2014 Model #272-48-02-51 with PCB100817F4 FX100-1B (Is this a FX101? board or is this something slightly different?)

I noticed one side stopped working and opened up the back of the unit to see if it were just dirty. One board had the red and green LED lit, the other side had nothing. I switched the boards from right to left and was able to figure out one board was bad and one was good.

I was all ready to order a replacement board from ebay until I found this site. I am not an engineer by any means but my brother who designed pinball machines for a living at Bally gifted me a pinball machine when I turned 7 years old. He would not fix the machine for me, but would tell me how to fix it. Long story short, at a pretty young age I became very efficient at soldering.

I saw this posting about "C8" and when I looked at the 47uF I realized WAIT! that's what I put in my guitars... and yes I went into my bag of tricks and found an orange drop 47uF cap. Desoldered the C8 popped this in, powered it up and voila it's working again! ( realize higher voltages are okay as long as they match the uF rating )

I will go ahead and order the full plethora of caps and redo both boards, but I had to see if I could get some instant gratification and indeed I did!

I compared the values on my board and they are consistent with the recommendations here (Thanks again for such a great detailed post) and I'm ordering parts to rebuild both boards today.

I did have one question, I re-read all these posts here and couldn't figure out one thing. Does changing everything help make the unit more efficient and get back to more cooling?

-Pat

If it lost some cooling ability, try cleaning the heat sinks under the fans. 1 or 2 posts had said that they had low voltage, and replaced a couple more caps to get the correct voltage back.

 

I have a similar cooler but it has a FX-503-2 board which is 220-240V. I have one fan which doesn't run, but everything else is fine. I piggy backed the Fan on the other fan and it's working fine. I would like to fix the original problem of one fan not running - any ideas?

 

I have a similar cooler but it has a FX-503-2 board which is 220-240V. I have one fan which doesn't run, but everything else is fine. I piggy backed the Fan on the other fan and it's working fine. I would like to fix the original problem of one fan not running - any ideas?

I am guessing that both fans are fed from the same circuit board, just different connectors. So to locate the fault you will need to examine the circuit board to locate what has opened the one fan feed circuit. If there is only one switching device then the failure may be a fuse, or a solder connection. If there are separate switching control devices it may be more complicated.

 

I have a similar cooler but it has a FX-503-2 board which is 220-240V. I have one fan which doesn't run, but everything else is fine. I piggy backed the Fan on the other fan and it's working fine. I would like to fix the original problem of one fan not running - any ideas?

Some controllers have three separate connectors for three fans, FAN1, FAN2, and FAN3.
Post sharp photos of both sides of the board.
Tell us which connector works with the fan and which doe not work.

 

Even though the fan is runnung, the peltier for that zone is probably not working

 

Thank you. I had pretty well given up on being able to fix my wine enthusiast fridge when I stumbled across this thread yesterday. I replaced cap C8 as suggested, and it is working great!

I replaced C8 (47uf 50v) and mine started right up. Couldn't believe it was that easy.

 

I replaced C8 (47uf 50v) and mine started right up. Couldn't believe it was that easy.

Glad to know that this easy fix worked for you.

 

I replaced C8 (47uf 50v) and mine started right up. Couldn't believe it was that easy.

Another failed electrolytic geeze. Very common.

 

Another wine cooler failure here. Wine Enthusiast 18 bottle two temp touchscreen refrigerator model 272-03-02-18 which uses two of the FX-101 boards.

When plugged in I get constant beeping, the lower board illuminates both the red and green LEDs brightly and the external fan comes on. After 1-2 seconds both LEDs fade out, green turning completely off and red fading to a faintly lit state, and the fan turns off. On the top board neither LED ever turns on and the fan doesn't turn on.

If I plug in with the spade connector (label P2) disconnected (which I think is for the TEC) from the top board all 4 LEDs and both fans fire up for a short time, then the green LED on the top board pulses off and on periodically and there are some odd and faint crackling type sounds that coincide with the green LED going off.

Based on some earlier posts it sounds like this might be due to the C8 cap and there only being enough current when the TEC load is disconnected? I'm a noob at this, but am going to attempt replacing the C8 capacitor since it's a pretty inexpensive fix.

Most of the part list links here have discontinued parts, can anyone help with an update? I don't understand all of the tech spec filters on Mouser or Digikey aside from the basics... 47uF, probably 50V+ as an upgrade the original based on posts here. Which other specs are critical? I'll get the C8 cap at a minimum but if it's a trivial cost to get the rest I might order all of them. Also if anyone has suggestions for a basic but capable soldering iron that'd be great too, I do not own one (yet).

 

The big deal with replacing the capacitor is keeping the polarity correct. Note carefully which side is positive. That is whatmatters the most with the installation. And I wish you success. This is a happy thread with a simple fix working for a lot of folks.

 

The big deal with replacing the capacitor is keeping the polarity correct. Note carefully which side is positive. That is whatmatters the most with the installation. And I wish you success. This is a happy thread with a simple fix working for a lot of folks.

No problem there. I had some basic electronics knowledge it's just been a while. But the tech specs on these sites I'll need to order from are completely foreign to me.

 

No problem there. I had some basic electronics knowledge it's just been a while. But the tech specs on these sites I'll need to order from are completely foreign to me.

You certainly need the rated capacitance (a small, <10% over is ok) and a voltage rating at least as high. I'd also look for low ESR if you can, and also pay attention to the temperature rating - more is better. And finally pay attention to the diameter and lead spacing and lead diameter. You can kind of deal with some mismatch but it's sure easier if the fit is right. If the leads are too fat, that's a pain. I think the capacitor can be taller without much problem but it's worth being sure.

 

You certainly need the rated capacitance (a small, <10% over is ok) and a voltage rating at least as high. I'd also look for low ESR if you can, and also pay attention to the temperature rating - more is better. And finally pay attention to the diameter and lead spacing and lead diameter. You can kind of deal with some mismatch but it's sure easier if the fit is right. If the leads are too fat, that's a pain. I think the capacitor can be taller without much problem but it's worth being sure.

It looks like most of the parts listed in this earlier post are still available Parts List with 3 exceptions. Hopefully this list is accurate as I have not verified it yet.

C12 & C15 (same part) are out of stock, is 647-UCY2D121MHD6 a safe alternative?
C10 is out of stock, is 667-EEU-FS1C222L a safe alternative?