Arkansas HVACR NewsMagazine September 2026

HVACR NewsMagazine September 2026

Tech News

compressor is always cheap insurance. When I do this, I always use higher-quality, American-made capacitors to give the customer the best chance at going for quite some time before another issue. In our market, run capacitors are among the most common failures we see due to the long run times, high temperatures, and high voltage transient events like surges. We have much better luck with higher quality capacitors, so we use them as a standard operating procedure.

Do You Replace the Contactor and Capacitor with a New Compressor? Bryan Orr, HVAC School

Replacing a compressor is expensive, time consuming, and physically taxing. If we are replacing a compressor, I want us to be doggone sure we aren't going to be dealing with the same thing again, and this often includes a shiny new contactor and capacitor (on single-phase units). There are a few schools of thought on this issue. One is that replacing the contactor and capacitor is a goodwill attempt to prevent future issues. Another is that these replacements are a slimy attempt to tack on more expense, particularly if you have capacitors that test within range and contactors that look a little rough but seem to work fine. It is a fair question to ask: “What is appropriate to do when replacing a compressor?”

The same also goes for hard start kits; I will always remove any old aftermarket hard starts and go back with a factory start capacitor and potential relay where it is called for by the application. Whenever I say something like that, I get a lot of folks who love aftermarket hard starts who question it. My explanation is HERE.

Why Replace the Capacitor?

For me, installing a new, properly sized capacitor with a new single-phase motor or