Hot take: Feeling capacitors for heat saved me on a tricky service call
I had this unit last month that kept cutting out on hot days. The homeowner was fed up because two other techs said it was fine. I started with the basics, checking voltage and airflow, but nothing stood out. Then I thought back to a conversation with a mentor about capacitors getting warm when they're going bad. After letting the system run for about five minutes, I touched the capacitor case. It was almost too hot to handle. I pulled out my meter and checked the microfarads, and it was way off spec under load. Swapped it out, and the AC has been perfect ever since. Now I always add a quick temp check with my hand to my capacitor testing routine. It's not in the book, but it works.