I have honestly never shorted the terminals when replacing a capacitor. I use an insulated pair of needle nose, pull each wire off one by one and put it on the proper pin on the new capacitor. Once all the wires are installed, I strap the new capacitor in and fire it up.

Thought I'd pull up a how to video for discharging the capacitor
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10 min done. It took longer to mess with the metal retaining strap then the actual install. This morning, bought one at my local motor rebuild place and made sure this was made in the US. The guy laughed at me asking me why I have no interest in doing it again in two months with an el cheapo. He knew. Mon's happy, I am happy.

Excellent! So happy for your Mom! :p

Thanks Baz. She's 83 and shouldn't have to suffer in this heat wave.

Its funny how these things fail. Somehow it know its the hottest day to quit just like smoke alarms. Batteries goes out in the middle of the night like 3:30 but never during the day or the weekends when people can simply go up and swap out the batteries with plenty of time to do so. Somehow, I think mfg programmed that in their products to piss us off.

Murphy's Law....lol.

You don't have the severity of heat we have here but given your Mom's situation - this still applies. I put a small window AC unit in one of my windows, so in situations where the central air is on the frtiz....I can still run some AC and buy some time to get repairs done.

I can also run it off a generator during power outages. Even if you just keep one in it's original packaging/box and pull it out for emergency use only - it's a nice Plan B to have.

Fortunately, we don't have many outages. Yep, there's an old window AC in one of the rooms. Mom's in great health and walk a mile daily. Still, the heat is no fun and uncomfortable for her.

Its been on the humid side a tiny bit here in the past few days but nothing like FL. That humidity down there kicks my ass. When we were in Asia two summers ago, my kids melted. They just can't walk half a block in what feels like 100% humidity yet it was only 85%. It was brutal. What's amazing is that some of the folks there are in full business attire, suit and tie and they look fine and very composed even riding on the crowded tram. My wife looked like she just came out of a swimming pool while the business woman standing in front of us was fully dressed, make-up and all, looking very normal.

Glad you got it fixed. Just in time for the rolling blackouts...

Those are the lizard people, hell bent on taking over the earth

Much like furnaces know the coldest day to stop working. Never fails. Glad you got it fixe and your mom is comfortable.

I paid some $150 and waited over a day to last year to get a capacitor replaced on my then 3 year old Carrier unit. Last Friday, I paid $33 locally to buy a $15 capacitor so I could replace it myself. On Saturday, I paid $45 on Amazon to get a new capacitor for each unit to store. I am ready.

No kidding man. This blonde lady with a very thick English accent was talking away totally composed like it it was 70 degrees. I know for a fact they don't have siht like that in the UK. Talking about acclimated to the local weather? I thought I can deal with heat, hanging out in the Mojave desert off roading in my college days sitting in vinyl seats in a pool of sweat or backpacking in the sierra. That humidity is no joke.

Yeah, no kidding. The mayor announced it today. I am going to be pissed if it happens to us. So I am selfish :D