Batboard

Hello all,
I have recently purchase a Motorola vhf Spectra, 110w trunk mount radio. And i have heard there may be an issue with some capacitors in the radio.
I am wondering how servere of a problem this is. I have heard it is a good preventative maintenance procedure to have these capacitors replaced.
I know they are a surface mount item,so i am not going to try to replace them myself. Is there anybody out there that knows anything about this,
or who may do this type of repair service.
Thank you,
Dave

Dave,

Most caps are easily replaced. I'd suggest getting ahold of kc7gr, aka Bruce, here on the forums. Good prices and lots of knowledge. Most of the cap replacement job's are actually pretty easy to do even with non-Surface Mount stuff.

Regards,

-Frank C.

Will on this forum did my 2 Spectras & did a great job. To say there may be an issue is an understatement. They will all fail, just a matter of time. If you plan to keep the Spectra, get the caps changed before any damage occurs. The Spectra is a great radio, & if you change the caps will give you excellent service for many more years. GARY N4KVE

DAR wrote:Hello all,
I have recently purchase a Motorola vhf Spectra, 110w trunk mount radio. And i have heard there may be an issue with some capacitors in the radio.
I am wondering how servere of a problem this is. I have heard it is a good preventative maintenance procedure to have these capacitors replaced.
I know they are a surface mount item,so i am not going to try to replace them myself. Is there anybody out there that knows anything about this,
or who may do this type of repair service.
Thank you,
Dave

We've found that the caps have about a 10 year lifespan. These electrolytic caps tend to leak at their
base over the circuit traces. Ive seen boards completely destroyed from this problem. We ended up purchasing all the caps on both the command and RF synthesizer as well as the caps in the control head and replaced hundreds of them in our fleet before replacing these radios 2yrs ago. If memory serves me, there are about 3-4 different values of caps used between these three boards. In any case, you'll want to inspect all Spectra and Astro Spectra units for leaking caps. They leave a black ooze around the cap itself, which eats the traces. Its a ticking time bomb. Great radio - bad caps.
B.

+1

I don't think visual inspection is going to be sufficient. Either replace them all or use an ESR meter. I found many which looked nice and were not leaking fluid, but they totally failed the ESR test.

Do other somewhat later model Motorola radios, such as the ASTRO SpectraPLUS or the XTL5000 have similar problems with their caps?

ASTROMODAT wrote:Do other somewhat later model Motorola radios, such as the ASTRO SpectraPLUS or the XTL5000 have similar problems with their caps?

Yes some of the old capacitors are in the later Astro Spectras and do leak. I can not speak for the XTL radios, they are not repaired here.

Astro Spectras also have three incorrect value capacitors in them. Production screw up?? Even the manual is incorrect.