Bleeding Power Off My Generator

Capacitors store juice.

Use insulated pliers, insulated gloves, and stand on something non conductive, like a block of wood while replacing. Only use one hand, and make sure the other isn't grounded to something. Those can be some nasty shocks.

Typically there is a device called a "bleed resistor" connected to ground somewhere in the circuit. If you do not have a proper ground connection, or if the resistor burned up and the circuit is open, then the cap charge has nowhere to go until YOU prodide it with a convenient path. Once you reconnect that wire, look around for a bad ground connection or a burnt little resistor somewhere. But also, the bleed resistor connection may have been DOWN STREAM from that wire, so reconnecting it may infact solve the problem too.

Just don't become the convenient path.

Insulated tools can give you false sense of security. Use a shorting stick. A piece of rowel with a piece of copper wire on one end. Add a jumper wire with alligator clips to the copper wire above, the other to the ground lug on generator. Does anyone know why they are called generators, when in fact they are alternators?

Get someone else to do it.