Ever wondered what happens when you energize an electrolytic cap with the polarity reversed? Well look no further ...
I was testing the fil reg circuits in my prototype Beepre rebuild this evening. Feeling lazy, and confident that I hadn't screwed up something as simple as rectification and smoothing, I only put a meter on one of the two fil reg circuits. It turns out it was the wrong one. The one I metered performed flawlessly. The other one exploded. With a burst of smoke and spray of some kind of oily fluid. Scared the hell out of me.
Don't know how, but I managed to screw up the bridge rectifier on one of the fil reg circuits. After it popped , I turned over the rectifier board and followed the current path: "So when red is positive, it flows through this diode and goes ... @##&% #$$$!!!!##, I hooked it up to the @#$$@# 0V rail!"
On a positive note: it didn't stink nearly as bad as PB had me expecting. It actually smelled like a household cleaning product - sort of fruity/flowery.
Hah! Lesson learned.
