Cap heating up at terminal connections?

[JettaGLI 10+ year member]

I have a 3 farad cap and, I have it bolted to the bottom of my amp rack. I know it has gotten hot at the ring connectors because the installer put these little plastic sleeves over the main 1/0 connector and they have shrunk like heat shrink tubing does.

I have had these sleeves on there for around 3 months, and have checked several times under the amp rack and they have not been deformed at all.

Why would my cap heat up to the point of melting these things all of a sudden?

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[ramos 5,000+ posts]

Did somethng in the trunk area short the terminals ? A cap discharges almost instantaneously. And does it really, really fast. So fast you may not have noticed it discharge. //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/smile.gif.1ebc41e1811405b213edfc4622c41e27.gif

 

[JettaGLI 10+ year member]

Did somethng in the trunk area short the terminals ? A cap discharges almost instantaneously. And does it really, really fast. So fast you may not have noticed it discharge. //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/smile.gif.1ebc41e1811405b213edfc4622c41e27.gif

If that were the case, wouldn't a fuse have blown somplace?

 

[LoudCrownVic 5,000+ posts]

Caps can heat up from use- terminals, especially corroded ones, tend to heat up because of the increased resistance.

It all depends... As long as the wires themselves are not damaged, and nothing is getting hot enough to catch fire, i wouldn't worry about it.

 

[ramos 5,000+ posts]

If that were the case, wouldn't a fuse have blown somplace?

I doubt it. I have been working on a car and forgot to pay attention to where I layed my screw driver down. Quite the light show but no blown fuses. //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/smile.gif.1ebc41e1811405b213edfc4622c41e27.gif