@jrustles:
This is the write up I promised you earlier:
@all others: warning! do not attempt this if you are not solder-iron savvy, and not familiar with the dangers of fooling around with AC 120V (for other countries, 240VAC). dangers including fire hazard, electrocution, the usual caveats and beyond. Also: handle the spiral CFL tubing with care when handling for it may crack when you least expected and you'll ended up inhaling the mercury vapour into your lungs.
**************************************************
Pic 1: this is a pic of a typical CFL innard (sans the tubing part).This is off of a 23Watt CFL made by Luminous. Notice that the electrolytic capacitors tops have deformed (bulged):
Pic: When tested, the ESR (aka "Z" reading, on the left side of the display) has gone up to becoming unreasonably "high" (in excess of 15+ohms @ 10kHz):
whereas the capacitance reading ("C", left side of the display) has dropped down to 2nF/0.002uF (from original value of 10uF). In other words: capacitance value lost by 5000x!
A new Rubycon (the real McCoy) 10uF 200V CFX capacitor is @ 9.3uF, which is very close to the listed capacitance value:
And the ESR (aka "Z" value @ 10kHz) as follows:
To pry open a typical (standard size) CFL, you need a small slot type screwdriver, and be able to secure it's blade (fresh new screwdriver with fresh new slot blade at the tip works best) and with care (one hand holding on the base case of the CFL body), carefully twist while turning the CFL body until you find a slight bending point...with care, you should be able to pry off the cover w/o cracking the entire case (in this case, I did caused a small piece of plastic to split, but otherwise, no structural related damage to the case):
Here's how the guts look like inside. Notice that red can sez "Aishi" (sometimes with some unknown/unidentifiable brands with no company info available...all made in china BTW)? That's the electrolytic that typically fails prematurely. My usual mode of attack is the replace this can with either some Panasonic EEU series or Rubycon CFX series of similar value (10uF 200V for 120V AC regional use lightbulbs). To gain access to the back side of the PCB (so as to desolder the lytic can) is to uncoil that 2 coiled connection on the right-hand side of the picture. Those 2 are the 2 leads from one end of the CFL tube. Care must be taken not to break, short (crossed them together) any of these wires. Use a pair of needle nose plier to do the work.
Once the 2 leads have been uncoiled, the back side of the PCV looks like this:
Lastly: the restoration procedure is pretty much the reverse of all these steps, be extra careful when re-connecting the 2 CFL tube leads back to the PCB board leads, etc. Snap the 2 body pieces back together and then test it from an outlet with a fire extinguisher handy (make sure that wall outlet is on circuit breaker).
The 2 mentioned high quality replacement lytic capacitors can be had if you shop carefully. Also: lots of counterfeitted stuff online and other garbage stuff from china so beware of them.
I usually don't bother with the rest of the "weak link" components such as mylar film capacitors, etc. for I cannot find any high reliability yet economical enough for me to service my CFL bulbs and make them last longer.. (cost wayy...more than the original purchase price of the bulb many times over).
Good luck.
Q.
Lastly: this is what I put into this surgery: Rubycon CFX series 10uF 200V @ 105C rating: