The AM Forum

The cleanup continues.
I have a large bunch of electrolytic caps, new cans, multi section, all kinds of voltages and values, but all are at least 30 years old.
Almost all are new old stock unused, but new caps are cheap and in most cases much smaller, is there any reason not to put them all in the trash?

Some of those might bring good bux. Even if there are hopeless they can be hollowed out. Shiny and new in and out beats shined up outside and new inside.

All depends if the ones you have were used in some collectable equipment.

Looking forward to seeing what you do with the space made by getting rid of them. saves ME buying new stuff.

Some people will use pretty old NOS caps as replacements but although I will sometimes leave a good older cap in place I won't go through the trouble of replacing one old electrolytic with another old electrolytic.

If you do a lot of restoration work you might consider in your spare time opening up some of the old caps and restuffing them so that they will be ready for use when you need them for restoration.  A plumbers pipe/tubing cutter does a neat job of opening up the old capacitor and most are pretty easy to restuff with modern parts.  Although a lot of old sets have plenty of room to install new replacement caps under the chassis in some cases the only good option is to use the original top mount location and you could have new caps ready to go.

30 year old caps can probably still be used.  Bring the voltage up slowly and they should work.  See if someone wants them before you deep six them.

Fred