Reply To: Will these Capacitors Work?

[David Stanton]

There are also specs called power factor, leakage, etc.; and some internal chemistries respond in different ways to fast-rise pulses. You will drive yourself crazy digging into all those specs, trying to understand how they apply to magnetos and it still may not work. Of course you want non-polar capacitors, but darn near all of them below 1 ufd are non-polar so not an issue. Most metal film capacitors will work, so buy them and try them. I’m a retired electrical engineer/circuit designer, and for magneto use, I don’t bother with anything beyond capacitance, voltage, and temperature (which is ambient temperature. Temp rise from current inside the capacitor is insignificant by comparison. Things get really picky if you are designing a circuit for high frequency radio waves in the megahertz region, and there is a whole ‘nuther set of rules for capacitor selection if the capacitor sees the 120 volt AC line in a UL or CSA approved device. Keep it simple!
Dave