Miller dialarc HF

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I recently purchased an old 310 Amp HF.I basically saved it from being recycled.I have come a long way in resurrecting it.The mice had enjoyed living inside for quite some time...I have acquired everything I need to attempt to make it work again.The first part of the battle had been won. It will stick weld.I am venturing into the high frequency tig portion and discovered the points were heavily corroded together...no gap whatsover....I have cleaned the points and I am setting them to .008. The next challenge is I see somebody bypassed the small rectangular capacitor?...part #miller 31-602.I see it is oozing and nasty and I am wondering since someone bypassed it is there anything else that may be damaged due to someone bypassing it?They are a little over $100 and I am getting a little skeptical of putting more and more money into this welder. Is there a good chance that this oozing component is all I need to get my high frequency working again?Is there a more affordable alternative to this pricy old component that would plug and play?I think this welder is from 1975 timeframe...
Reply:That capacitor sets the resonance for the HF circuit. if someone bypassed it I have to image it was to disable the HF start in kind of an awkward way? I am not sure what damage it might have done but my gut says maybe none. However, that being said, it is a sine wave TIG welder. You can buy a half way decent AC/DC inverter TIG welders for under $1000, so you have to really think about how much money you want to put into this unit. It might be better to find another similar welder on the cheap to be parts donor rather than sinking hundreds into new parts that may or may not work, and then you end up with what some might consider a mediocre TIG welder (no balance adjustment, no frequency adjustment, no square wave output, no pulse, etc. etc.) The other approach would be to relegate this machine to stick welding where it really shines the most, and just forget the TIG aspect of this machine.Miller Multimatic 255