A friend of mine was asked to repair a Harbor Breeze ceiling fan. He was told that the pull chain for the fan switch had pulled out and was missing. When he opened it up, it was true that the chain for the fan switch had pulled out. It's a 3-way 4-wire fan switch and he bought a replacement switch but hasn't put it in yet.
But, when he opened up the ceiling fan he found that the capacitor had burned and melted. Here are 3 photos (in .jpg and URL link form) of the damaged capacitor:
It turns out that finding Harbor Breeze support or parts through the manufacturer is apparently a virtual impossibility. The Harbor Breeze ceiling fans are sold at Lowes, and Lowes has some parts such as switches, but Lowes does not sell capacitors.
We found at least two online third party sources that sell ceiling fan capacitors, and my friend just ordered the replacement capacitor. It should arrive next week.
I didn't even know that ceiling fans had a capacitor in them, and I don't know what the capacitor does. We just saw the burnt and melted part and figured out through some Internet searching that it is a capacitor.
My question are:
1) Given the burnt and melted condition of the capacitor as shown in the photos, is it possible (or likely) that the ceiling fan motor itself is also bad?;and,
2) What does the capacitor do; and do capacitors sometimes just burn and melt like this one did without that being caused by something else such as a bad motor?