Hard start capacitor kits

[Steve S]

I've been reading about these kits and talked to a few people in the park about these kits. I was pretty amazed at how many owners with newer units have the hard start capacitor kits installed for their AC units.
What I'm curious about is that they've all said that they've not only installed these for when needed off the grid but they've said that they make a difference at the parks as well.
How many here have installed one and was it worth it while hooked into the hydro pole? I can understand the value of one while hooked up to the genset.
Should these items be installed at the factory? Like seriously these things are cheap!

[TheRealMacGyver]

Ive used them on my home ac only because the unit is as old. They should not need them, but they do help if the unit wont start, which generally causes more problems. There is already a capacitor for the compressor and the hard start parallels on that. The hard starts have a tendency to melt apart after a year or two from my experience. More of a bandaid in my opinion. Might help if you have low or dirty power I guess.

[Steve S]

Ive used them on my home ac only because the unit is as old. They should not need them, but they do help if the unit wont start, which generally causes more problems. There is already a capacitor for the compressor and the hard start parallels on that. The hard starts have a tendency to melt apart after a year or two from my experience. More of a bandaid in my opinion. Might help if you have low or dirty power I guess.

Thanks for the informative post, I never knew these things about them.

[cvin]

You probably saw this in your searches and it is not cheap, but there should be some threads on the micro air set ups also

[xcntrk]

I installed a hard-start capacitor on an AC unit in my old TT. The trailer had a single 15k BTU AC and was rated for 30-amp shore power. However when dry camping, my portable genset is only a 3k watt unit, and would go into over-amperage protection/fault whenever the AC attempted to start. So I looked my AC unit (Coleman IIRC) and they make a hard-start kit for it. The AC already has a capacitor or two, you're adding yet another to help alleviate the amp shock when the compressor starts. Worked like the champ. The 3k watt gen would hunker down with load then finally stabilize and run the 15k AC unit after the upgrade.