Are you certain it has leaked? That's pretty rare.

Very difficult to remove without PCB damage and best left alone unless you know for certain they are faulty.

I would cut the leg protruding through to the bottom of the PCB as close to the board as possible - flood both pads with fresh solder and wiggle side to side a small amount at a time as I heated each pad.

Good luck which ever way you try.

Oh...that looks pretty gungy. The last thing I would be worried about right now is the cap being leaky you have a lot more problems than that.

I would send the board to a professional and even then it may be written off by the look of it.

Looks like an original cap. Probably better than any replacement. When they get fat or explode, replace them.

One way the caps will tell you for sure they are bad is with a domed top. Should be flat, you'll know when you find one, it will be obviously pregnant.

Any time you check a board in or out of a game check all the Electrolytic caps for domed tops. An oscilloscope is the tool to test caps live, a capacitance tester (included in some meters these days) out of circuit...dunno if they're accurate in circuit.

As for removing one ...

1) you need a good hot iron that can sink heat (but NOT a solder gun! NEVER a solder gun!). $29 electronics stores hobby irons need not apply. Needs to be a good professional unit.
2) flow a little solder on each side to "wet" the joint and get good heat flow.
3) moving from side to side, heat until all solder is molten then GENTLY rock the cap to pull the leg slightly through the PCB. If there is any resistance, STOP and reflow. Switch to other side. Repeat until cap is removed.

That gunge doesn't look very good around the IC legs - what's UNDERNEATH them???

Getting those caps off is not hard. Use a temperature-controlled solder station, set it HOT (~700F) and have your solder sucker ready. Flow it, hit it, done. Do the same on the other pin and it should drop out.

I pull parts like that all the time; the secret is to make it happen FAST before heat can transfer to things you don't want it to and damage components (like lifting traces or via's!)

But that cap doesn't appear to be bad. Got a cap checker? Don't assume, test! No ESR problem and capacitance is in-spec, leave it alone.

3 coils not working and the rest are ok? Odds are it's not the cap. Check the wiring to the coil and the driver transistors; are you seeing voltage on the output of the transistor *and* trigger on the drivers? My money is on the problem being there instead of at that cap.

These caps are snap in design, that makes them harder to remove because they cling to the pads even without solder.
And i agree that i would test first with a cap checker if it is out of spec before attempting to replace.

I just pull the cap off, including the through hole (which is then gone).
Then I solder a piece of wire from a resistor to the trace on the upper part of the pcb, sticking through the hole to the bottom.
Then I solder the new cap, with the wire to the lower part of the pcb.

You intentionally remove the through hole?

I think cutting the cap apart from the top to get easy access to the holes on top & bottom is preferable to removing the through hole.

OP, here is an ESR meter recommended on a recent Broken Token podcast.
http://anatekinstruments.com/products/fully-assembled-anatek-blue-esr-meter-besr?variant=10927139139

Seriously, these caps are not anywhere near as troublesome as some would make out.

Leave them alone and look elsewhere for your problems as per the Wiki.

Get outta here...you're either trolling or completely incompetent.

You won't get an accurate measurement in circuit. It may be close enough on the big caps. Which meter are you testing them with and what does it say in the manual?

I would leave the caps alone, and if you do start having resets, get Rob Kahr's reset fix:

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/announcing-new-product-to-help-resolve-resets-in-wpc-era-games

I consider myself a pretty decent solderer, but I won't mess with C5 or C11 again unless I absolutely have to.

Depends on your tester. The one I have uses a low-enough voltage that it does't bias on semiconductors and thus can usually get an in-circuit result. If it can't it'll tell you the cap's in-circuit and it can't check it.

No really.
The cap has very thick legs. Imho too thick for the hole in the PCB. Even a design flaw!
If you try very carefully the chance of destroying your PCB is still very high.

So I don't even bother trying carefully. I desolder the holes for the cap, and the through hole sticks to the legs of the cap... Too bad.

Even when the through hole stays in the PCB there's no way to be sure the electrical connections are still intact. Minor fractures can cause major problems. And if they measure okay, they may fail after a few games.

I repair the through hole in the above way: a piece of wire (eg a leg of a resistor) which is soldered from the top to the bottom of the PCB. The leg of the cap will be soldered to the bottom side of the PCB, but the through hole needs a connection to the upper side of the PCB as well. The wire will make sure of that.

Personally I think this is a very reliable solution which will 100% work and stay to work for many years to come.

PS: see http://www.flipperwinkel.nl/tech/wpcelkos/ for what I mean. (the site is written in Dutch, but the pics show everything)

Intentionally damaging circuit boards has to be number 1 on the bullet list of Poor Standards and Practices of electronics repair. If you can't do it properly, let someone who can do the repair.

"Snap Caps" were designed to hold themselves in the PCB holes while the soldering operation was taking place.

By their very construction they are hard to remove but that's the "nature of the beast".

I disagree that you need to intentionally damage the board - the job can be done without damaging the PCB BUT I maintain it is only in rare circumstances that they need replacing at all. There are dozens of other things that usually cause resetting issues - not these caps.

It shows. Going straight to stitches isn't my first choice for a board. Sure, sometimes a board is damaged when you get it and needs them. But going right to them as your repair methodology is a bit shoddy.

If I was totally stuck without the proper tools to remove a snap-cap, I'd slit the plastic wrapper, using mini-diags cut the can away, and simply unroll the cap.

This leaves only the two cap legs, that will unsolder easily without the heat sinking ability of all that foil.

Don't mess up circuit boards!

caps_(resized).jpg

Yep. Once you've determined a component is bad and has to come off it is ALWAYS preferable to destroy IT while making the removal of the pins/whatever easy than screwing around with trying to get it off intact while risking the board.

Just like Vidz said, this only applies if you don't have the proper equipment to remove the component intact as it's preferable to use the right equipment vs. everything else.

Yeah see, we all know how a solder stitch works, but your illogic will forever remain a mystery.