I had a similar problem with GM headlamp switches, the older ones mounted on the dash. These, too, have a thermal breaker built into the switch, also has the dimmer potentiometer. These swithces were put together with crimp tabs and some of those tabs were part of the electrical circuit. After a few of years, the plastic parts shrink and the tabs in the electrical circuit loosen. (In my opinion, a bad design detail.) These heat and causes the breaker to trip. Headlamps may flicker too. On mine, it would trip out when on high beams, but was ok on low beams. As luck would have it, mine failed at dusk while I was on the way home. An oncomming police curiser saw my headlamps acting up and I was fiddling with the high-low beams. He turned around and chased me down - thought I was signaling him. LOL - I had some explaining to do. I made it home with the low beams. My solution was to replace the switch since I already had another one. However, I experimented and found that I could repair the unit by soldering the offending connectors, only the ones in the electrical circuit. I chose to continue with the new switch and keep the repaired one for a backup. One never knows if he messed up the thermal trip calibration while soldering. That shouldn't happen if the solder job was done quick enough without overheating the internal parts. By the way, did you find a problem in removing the switch from the dash? The knob and shaft won't pass through the hole, and the knob is permanently fastened to the shaft. There is a trick. The knob and shaft will come out of the switch. Somewhere in the switch housing is a small release button, usually on top. Press this down and the shaft will pull out.

"The last time it acted up i checked and had the 24 volts coming from the thermostat to the board but no voltage from the board to the contactor which is what made me think a pressure switch may be locking the voltage out" I want to be clear about something... When you say "the board", do you mean the control board that sits inside your furnace\blower? If so, that's what I mean as well. That board does a lot of things (including the timed shut-off delay mentioned below) but as far as I know, all it does to turn the condenser unit on or off is sent 24 volts over two lines to the unit, specifically the contactor within the unit. There certainly may be more complicated control systems out there but that's the way traditional A\C systems were set up. In such systems, the control board has absolutely no idea of what any "pressure switch" inside the condenser unit is doing, no idea of whether you have no coolant in the lines, no idea of any sort of problem or situation that might exist within the condensing unit. When that control board wants to turn on the condenser unit, it simply sends 24 volts down those little wires. If you turn your thermostat down far enough to signal that you want the room cooler, the thermostat sends a signal to the control board in the furnace, which then turns the blower on by the coils, and then sends the 24 volts to the condensing unit. If in fact you have "no voltage from the board to the contactor" despite you adjusting the thermostat to start the cooling cycle, then your first concern would be to understand why the board or the wires from the board aren't working properly. If, on the other hand, you mean some sort of control board within the condenser unit itself, one that acts as a second brain (third if you count the thermostat) in the system and takes into account information from within the condenser such as high and low pressure readings before sending the 24 volts along to the contactor, then sure, you might well have an issue with that particular board or the pressure sensors or perhaps a whole bunch of things. Don't know. What I do know is that if you are indeed talking about this sort of internal control within the condenser itself and when you think it should be triggering the contactor but you can't detect any juice between the internal board and the contactor, then your problem isn't the contactor. The only way you can determine whether a contactor is bad is to send 24 volts to it. If you do that but the 220 volt lines within the unit aren't energized, then it's the contactor and indeed, because contactor issues can be all about carbon buildup on the contacts, you might have the symptoms you describe. But if the contactor isn't getting the 24 volts at all, you need to look for another answer. I strongly suggest that you turn this over to a repair tech given that you're no longer talking about replacing a $12 contactor in 15 minutes. Nick in Palm Springs

You definitely can't just randomly replace the 80A breaker with a larger one. Even if you did, you'd be limited by the 70A breaker outside... Don't even think about replacing that. 60A (what the water heater needs) is less than 70A (what you have), but you'd end up with some situation where you can use your hot water ONLY if you turn off everything else in your house. Do you want that? Basically, forget it. You'd need a service upgrade for this to ever work in a reasonable way.

The rectifier can probably be replaced with a Radio Shack 276-1185 bridge rectifier by using only 3 of the terminals (cost about $4). However, I don't think a bad rectifier would cause high voltage. The two units I had (Yamaha EF600, Honda ES3500) would still produce 120 volts AC with the rectifier completely removed. You might want to try that- just take it out and tape the wires up well. Looking at the linked manual, I think your unit should still make 120 v with the rectifier completely removed. IMHO, there are 3 things that could cause high voltage (1)high engine speed, (2)your capacitor has drifted to a much higher value (3)a stator/rotor flaw. You have eliminated high engine speed if you have 60Hz. Is the capacitor marked with a value? If so, do you have a way to check the actual capacitor (condenser) value? As I said before, if it is a stator/rotor problem, it would be the first time I have heard of a higher voltage as a result. Of course, there is a first time for everything. Here is a link that might be useful: Manual ex1000