Phil Nelson wrote:
People can honestly disagree about reforming, but personally I have had poor
luck with it. Some caps will reform, but I found that they were not reliable
for the long haul.

Why risk frying an expensive power transformer just to save a few bucks
worth of electrolytics?

Why risk frying an expensive power transformer by turning on an antique
radio?

If you reform the caps the way I said to, you will know before you finish
if the cap is going to be good for the long haul. I have never had one
fail that correctly went through a reformation.

That said, I have lost electrolytics when I have tried the trick of using
a variac to "reform" the whole power supply before applying full mains
voltage. I am quite sure that most of them would have reformed correctly
if I hadn't skimped on the process.

-Chuck