Mouser sold me 5 year old Nichicon Caps - should I use them or demand a refund?

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Many years ago our computers at work had regular 'preventative maintenance'; we called it 'causative maintenance'. Can you guess why?

Your computers aren't in my home theater system.

I've recapped enough older gear to know that in addition to ensuring the longevity of the unit, new caps sound better than ones at the end of their functional lifespan. Aside from the Cornell Dubilier filter caps, this amp is full of no-name cheapo caps. While researching this amp I discovered that other owners have had cap failures in recent years.
 
You need a really good temperature regulated solder-vac system to reduce the chance of lifting pads and breaking the trace's connection to the pad. The thump of spring loaded solder-vacs have done plenty of damage and often you aren't going to be quick enough to remove the heating iron and jam the vac tip onto the pad before the solder cools.

The type with a heated vac tip and trip button are best. But expensive, some, actually most being several hundred dollars. And how about those soldering irons with a squeeze bulb tip ? Not too shabby but the vacuum is usually weak, they clog quickly and have to spit the clog out the tip very often, and the common model comes with tips that are eaten by the flux very quickly, they last only a few hours.

I therefore most often end up going by the old "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" plan. Unless I am working for a well equipped company with adequate budgets.
 
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Agreed that the proper tools are essential. I bought a Aoyue 701A rework station a couple of years ago, which didn't cost a fortune (> $250 CAD) and works great for my purposes (hobbyist). Of course lots of practice is also essential, and I've lifted my share of solder tabs on cheap gear before getting comfortable enough to work on more expensive stuff.
 
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Many years ago our computers at work had regular 'preventative maintenance'; we called it 'causative maintenance'. Can you guess why?

Let me guess. It was a very, very old computer. After being run for less than an hour, it needed to be shut down for maintenance, while techs went into the machine, testing many thousands of tubes. Over 100 tubes were replaced, making it ready for another hour of service! :D
 
No, it wasn't old - just a few years. Used TTL logic. The 'maintenance' consisted mainly of cleaning connectors where the PCBs plugged into the backplane, and cleaning disc heads (and re-aligning discs where necessary). Failures were more common in the 48 hours after a 'preventative' maintenance. Later on the manufacturer stopped insisting on 'maintenance' and the computers were then more reliable.
 
You need a really good temperature regulated solder-vac system to reduce the chance of lifting pads and breaking the trace's connection to the pad. The thump of spring loaded solder-vacs have done plenty of damage and often you aren't going to be quick enough to remove the heating iron and jam the vac tip onto the pad before the solder cools.

The type with a heated vac tip and trip button are best. But expensive, some, actually most being several hundred dollars.

I'll second the recommendation for using a nice desoldering tool, like a Hakko 808 (discontinued) or the FR300, its superior replacement. The temperature control on the FR300 is still just "1, 2, 3 etc." and not ºC, so you have to test things out to avoid torching a damaged PCB. However, it can be very gentle if you use it right, and you can get really good work done with it on 'next to dead' PCBs. I find that it's useful to use a flux pen and then extra solder to preheat and provide a pool of solder large enough to contact the desoldering tool's tip, to make the desolder process happen quickly and completely.

So, it's not a slam-dunk guaranteed tool, despite its cost, but if you're careful with one, you can do a lot of board rework very safely and very quickly. Braid and hand-held Soldapults are a lot tougher to use.
 
I ordered a pile a caps from Mouser this week to recap a 20 year old Adcom amp. The amp works fine, but I plan to keep it, so I thought I'd service it as preventative maintenance.

While reviewing my parts order, I discovered the Nichicon KW series 63v 100uf caps they sent me were made in the 32nd week of 2011.

It seems silly to me to start with 5 year old caps, but I though I'd see what others here think.

Hello everyone! I replaced in my amp all the electrolytes 96 model year on the unused electrolytes 2006 release. However, before using them to stand for two days under voltage close to nominal and no problems were observed. Capacitance and ESR are normal. The sound is excellent.
 
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