tooleyc

I had this exact same behavior on my Sundance lx-15 controlled spa. In fact, since the time we purchased it several years ago it has intermittently had these kinds of problems - turn it on, go to turn on the second pump and it cycles itself. Turn on the heater and then try to turn on the pumps and it cycles itself. In November it got so bad we couldn't keep it heated. I searched the web and finally found this thread. The problem has a happy ending - I pulled out the logic board and examined it for rounded caps as described. The big one in the middle was -slightly- rounded but I guess they are supposed to be perfectly flat. At any rate I decided to try to replace it. I went to Fry's and found 3 caps that put in parallel matched the specification. (apparently it's ok to exceed the voltage rating on a cap, just as long as you match the capacitance rating. Caps put in parallel have a capacitance equal to the sum of the individual caps.) At any rate, the only difficulty I had was on deciding on how to remove the old one as it is both soldered and glued in place. I opted to just drill out one of the two pins, leaving the old cap in place and then soldering in some jumper wires to the new cap. It's not the most beautiful thing in the world, but it worked great! I am very pleased with this and wanted to post a message so that others might follow the same path. It ended up costing me ten bucks to fix my spa. Not a bad deal. Looking in Wikipedia, it appears that there were lots of bad caps manufactured in the early 2000s - the brand name cap that I found on my board was specifically mentioned as one of the faulty manufacturers. So... I hope my experience gives others some inspiration to try to fix this particular problem - good luck.