What would cause a capacitor to fail prematurely?

[HmoobVaj 10+ year member]

My brother and I decided to test out his 1.5f capacitor on a sub system I was using temporarily as my home theater sub. Basically its my receiver feeding a mono signal to a power acoustic amp bridged for about 300w to a 10" bazooka tube. Everything was powered with a battery charger set to 60amps output. We charged the cap like instructed and got it working. We were testing it for about 10mins with heavy bass material and suddenly it just started making a hissing noise as if air was leaking from it. It also got almost too hot to hold too. Luckily it didnt explode on us but we have confirmed it's dead.

So wtf happened?

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[Etac 10+ year member]

i dont know

but its probaly more useful broken then it was working //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/laugh.gif.48439b2acf2cfca21620f01e7f77d1e4.gif

 

[SRim23 5,000+ posts]

you sure you had the positive and neg hooked up correctly? grounded properly?

 

[Mitch86 5,000+ posts]

It's a capacitor, who cares?

 

[SRim23 5,000+ posts]

It's a capacitor, who cares?

my cap matched with my stinger batt keeps my voltage above 12.5 volts at all times. without the combination my civic cant handle more than 400 watts before lights start dimming and battery begins to drain. they arent completely useless, just not practical. if it didnt come in my car i wouldnt use it after reading all the capacitor alternatives.

 

[Rich B 5,000+ posts]

Embarrassement.

//content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/biggrin.gif.d71a5d36fcbab170f2364c9f2e3946cb.gif

 

[HmoobVaj 10+ year member]

you sure you had the positive and neg hooked up correctly? grounded properly?

I'm positive (pun intended) it was hooked up right. Dont think it'll work that long if it wasnt.

 

[SRim23 5,000+ posts]

I'm positive (pun intended) it was hooked up right. Dont think it'll work that long if it wasnt.

it would if the ground was bad... you did have it grounded right? if it was just a poor ground and not a sufficient one itll work just work really bad/heat up just like amps will im assuming.

 

[Supergumby5000 5,000+ posts]

why did it fail? shoot, you should be thanking your cap right now. Its doing you a huge favor in its sacrifice.