The capacitors we’re talking about replacing are the 4 surface mount electrolytic caps. I have not see any go bad yet, but it’s only a matter of time and replacing them now is simply cheap insurance against future failure!
You can try to get them off in normal ways, hot air, soldering iron on each leg working it back and forth, but I like to simply cut them off with my flush cutters, I use the Excelite 170 series cutters.
Once off you can wipe the legs off with your soldering iron.
Now is a good time to clean the pads up, I use rubbing alcohol and a stiff toothbrush.
Now that the pads are clean apply some flux and some more solder to each.
There are 4 caps, one is a 470uF cap and the others are 100uF caps. The kit I supply uses a normal radial leaded 470uF cap to replace the smd 470uF, this is mostly for convenience and it’s pretty common. Installing a new smd cap is ok, but it’s very tight in that area and it’s hard to find a 470uF smd cap that is smaller than original to make install easier, but it was easy to find 100uF smd caps that were a smaller size and are in fact easy to install, so that’s what’s provided.
Now cut about half the legs off the 470uF cap and bend them out to match the smd pads.
Apply some flux to the legs and pre tin them (add some solder).
Solder it down. Note the markings on the cap for Negative lead, make sure it’s oriented correctly!
Apply flux to pads and legs of the 100uF caps and solder them down. Note the markings on the cap for Negative lead, make sure it’s oriented correctly!
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