This video is brought to you by sportlin quality, integrity and tradition, so the complaint today is that they have no control on the thermostat and we actually just had one fail recently, and i changed this one, but anyways no control, no adjustment, it's not locked out! Nothing! You could do it doesn't do anything so pull that off. There's no batteries in the back, we're going to test between r and c 27 volts. So we got a bad thermostat. So we're going to change out the thermostat, then we'll check out the rest of the unit thermostat is installed.

Just got to go through the installer setup set up. The the biggest thing is is the number of periods i already changed it to two, but i got to change the zone sensor make sure it's reading the right temperatures. I don't really mess with any of this stuff, two periods per day and there's three questions. You have to answer for the zone sensor and i've already answered some of them.

Is there a wired sensor? Yes, is there a wired indoor, remote? Yes, indoor sensor, name, indoor sensor, t-stat terminal one? What type of sensor we need to set it to a 10k use? T-Stat sensor for temp control, no use indoor sensor. Yes, that's it don't! Yes, yes and let's see, if we're reading the right temperature now boom 75 degrees and set the time and the date the ac i'm working on. Is that one right there and i'm waiting for the thermostat to finish its delay, so not that it really makes a difference that it's memorial day weekend, but it is friday before memorial day may 28th, and i noticed that this rack is kind of dirty. There's that silly disconnect switch too.

This rack is kind of dirty, so i'm going to rinse it off, so we eliminate the service call potential for a dirty rack. You know what i'm saying for this weekend, so it's not going to take cleaner, just going to be a quick little rinse get all that stuff off real quick to try to eliminate a service call all right um. This one has the first version prodigy, so you're not gon na be able to read it, but it says cooling right now. It just turned into cooling, um yeah.

We've got a full call for cooling all as well we're gon na check for a temperature split across this guy uh. If i don't see the need, i'm not gon na put service gauges on it, because if it's working, fine, the coils look clean filters are new belts, look clean or good. We just serviced this unit not too long ago. So i'm just going to double check all the temperatures.

I love these linux units, so we've got outside air temperature of 92 return air temperature of 75 discharge air temperature of 78. I love these units until the discharge. Air temperature fails because it's not 78 degree discharge. Air temp, so i'm going to verify with my thermometer and then we might have to order a new discharge.

Air temp, if that's the case well, this unit just shut off. I don't know why it says fan only, but we still have a call y1y2 and uh open this guy up. Oh, it's not gon na show it now, but the expansion valve was all frosted up like it wasn't feeding refrigerant through it yeah something's funky there that wasn't right. Oh, it almost feels like a plugged up liquid line filter dryer because it's uh it's cold on the bottom of the dryer warm on the top we'll see, i'm gon na go, get some gauges and stuff and we'll probe up on this guy all right.

This is a 410 asus and we've clearly got low suction. So if we go to our tool box, look at our liquid line, temp on one side of the dryer is 88 and on the other side of the dryer is 38 degrees. So and it's frosting up it's cold right here, this dryer's plugged up now. My fear is why? Because we've changed that dryer in that txb about a year ago, let me go ahead and exit test mode.

Okay, so we've got a plugged up dryer again, don't think. There's anything wrong with the txv, but don't know, but something that does concern me is that refrigerant smells like crap. It doesn't smell burnt, but it doesn't smell normal um something's, going on there. So we're gon na need to change that dryer and uh.

I mean i'd. Love to put a suction dryer on this too, but i don't know we'll see, i don't know if i have one of those we'll have to see. I kind of suspect there might be something else going on, because this dining room is kind of warm right. Now.

It's hot, not hot, but it's warm and i've yet to hear this unit turn on once. So i kind of want to go over here this one's kind of tricky, though, because ever since i took over oh now, it's running i'll go figure; okay! No! No! There's hot air, okay cool right on, i was worried. I didn't hear it turn on, but yes now it did turn on so um. I'm gon na leave that one alone then, but yeah.

This is a six ton package unit. We're gon na need a dryer. Now here's the crappy thing, i guess the dryer's doing its job. You would hope it just sucks to pull that whole thing out, but yeah.

It is what it is. We got a plugged up, dryer, so um. Let me go see what i got in the truck. All right, let's see what i got in the van here um.

Oh look at that. I got a 16 4 hh, that's too big, but i'd rather oversize it um. I don't know, though i don't know. I don't know that i need the hh.

You know what we might as well just go with the 16 3. it'll be oversized because, what's in there's an eight cubic inch, sixteen three that's a three-eighths dryer that should be good, something's, obviously causing contamination. I was smalling the the refrigerant a little bit more and i don't know it's kind of torn. I don't have an oil test, kit um, but i don't think it's burnt uh.

I think yeah. I don't know anyways we're just gon na go ahead and do this pull a good evacuation and change the refrigerant it's kind of a chore, because this is just to recover and make the repair. I've still got to get my evacuation stuff too and uh. You know.

I mean it's not the end of the world, but you just got to lug it all up and down this one has a little scuttle access, it's kind of weird, so it's a little time-consuming, but it is what it is right. My access is down there, but they got a lot of crap in the way so uh it goes up to there. So we're going to uh kind of reorganize up here for him clean some stuff up that way i can get in and out better. So i've got one of these uh hooks on my rope and the cool thing is: if you do it right, you can hook onto everything and pull it up.

So i'm hooked on right now i got ta put the camera down to pull it up, but um. If you get good at it, like i i pulled out, i pulled all this stuff up through the other access. We got two accesses. We got to go through in a little walkway so but we'll get it all up here, all right.

It's a hot day! Um! You know i really don't want to be here at 1, 30 in the afternoon starting a recovery and a repair and a dryer change, but it's life. If i don't do it today, i'm gon na have to do it tomorrow, so might as well just get it done today. You know um. Now, i'm you know kind of exaggerating there.

It's friday, i'm not on call, but still we got to get the work done. Okay, try to make it go as fast as possible. Um i've got uh schrader core removal tools on here pulled the schraders out now i did. I have another set of 3 8 hoses, but i don't have them in my van right now.

I need it'd be best if i had 3 8 hoses right here, but i at least have 3 8 hoses on the outlet and then to the tank to kind of reduce the amount of restriction to see if we can drop the head pressure just a little Bit uh, it's probably about 90 degrees outside, so i am gon na have to hose this tank off um i'll. Do that and get it cooled all that good stuff, um yeah we're pretty much ready. So i always uh crack right here right and it's pushing through to here and then we're just gon na purge. Okay.

So now we know we're purged uh, but i'm not gon na reuse. This refrigerant anyways, that's a vacuum down cylinder and we're gon na watch it with the scale to make sure that we don't overfill it. So i've got the cool presser tool running on this guy. It's just a nice flow of water.

Try to cool it off. My outlet pressure is about 370 psi right now. Uh pressure coming out of the system is about 229., so our biggest point of restriction. Well, the biggest thing: that's going to cause this guy to shut off and go off on high pressure.

Is the outlet hoses okay that outlet hose especially going to the tank um, that's the biggest point of restriction and then, as far as slowing down the evacuation, uh is going to be the quarter inch hoses that we're using and then the schraders, but we removed the Schrader, so we've done everything in a perfect world. I would have uh 3 8 hoses right here too, but yeah we're looking good 394 degrees or psi. That is not bad for 410a. It's 105 out here right now, so that's not bad at all.

That's pretty good! Since i am uh going bigger with the dryer, it's already super tight in here like restrictive and it's a pain to kind of get to i'm actually going to relocate the dryer over here. This is the liquid line exiting the condenser right here, so i'm gon na put the dryer right here. Uh there's plenty of room, i looked at it, it should fit in there. Just fine, the door should still shut and then uh i'll just put a piece of pipe right here straight pipe it that way.

Uh it's just easier, all right, we're all recovered man. It's just warming up now, granted that is in the sun is 106., but there is a nice breeze, though um, okay, uh nitrogen, flowing through the high side coming out the low side. I relocated the dryer out here going that way also came over here. I swaged a piece of copper here in here: got ta sweat that in without melting, the entire thing it'll be interesting, but we'll be good and uh yeah we're gon na knock this out.

You all right we're all brazed in i've got to uh. Do a pressure test on it and then i got to take a bunch of stuff down and go get my evacuation rig and everything. So i'm going to go ahead and uh. Do this tightness test? Let's see there, we go so we're going to get it pressurized up and then we'll start the timer and then go take all the stuff down and everything all right.

Um we gained 0.3 psi point: it's like toggling between 0.3 and 0.2 of gain, so we're good to go uh. It's been 23 minutes, we're gon na go ahead and end it and then uh we're gon na go ahead and start hooking up the vacuum rig and everything and getting it all set up. I went ahead and hooked up three hoses because we have a liquid line port up. There got everything going on so uh, i'm gon na open up the gas ballast turn the pump on.

It's got the slow ramp up, we're gon na, let it run and then once we see below about 1500 to 1000 microns, we'll close the gas ballast, but it shouldn't take long. But i want to pull good on this oil because i'm i don't know what's causing that dryer to plug up. I don't know if there's moisture contamination. What, but that's why we're also going to change the refrigerant too, all right we're moving along we're doing pretty good.

Now i want to point something out: okay, so here's what we got going on, i initially on my initial pull down. I was using three hoses okay, so i've got one hose here, going to a t, that's hooking to the half inch connection and then it's going to the discharge line and then to the liquid line up there. Okay and then i had another hose going to the suction line. All right now, as i got my initial pull down, i went ahead and shut down the suction line.

It's shut down now, okay, so we're only pulling through the liquid line and we're getting a true reading on our micron gauge, because we're pulling all the way through the system up to the micron gauge. You see how it's kind of dancing around 896 895, but i want to point this out. This is so important to understand this. This is the furthest away from the vacuum pump.

Okay notice over here. This is where it's actually pulling on the discharge line, and it says 588 that is not an accurate number, because that is getting uh influenced basically by the pump see the pull from the pump is pulling on that before it's completely going through the system. So you need to understand that i know we can't always pull a perfect evacuation. Okay, we can't always use all these fancy hoses.

You know not everybody. Has these fancy hoses all right if you're gon na pull an evacuation through a manifold if you're gon na use the built-in micron gauge it's not best, it's not the best thing to do. Okay, but sometimes you got to do what you got to do right. You need to understand the evacuation just because it says 580 on the micron gauge right, where it's pulling doesn't mean it's a true evacuation.

Now, if we shut that ball valve off and we watch the decay you're gon na notice that it would rise significantly because it's being influenced by the vacuum pump again, 894 585. Okay, this one is shut down completely, so this is going through the evaporator. The expansion valve and coming all the way back to here and getting a true reading on here, all right. So it's so important that we understand that because i feel like judging by people's social media posts and all that stuff people don't understand about pulling an evacuation and just because it says it on.

There doesn't mean anything because, when i shut that off, like right now, watch boom see how it's rising okay, first off - something you need to understand, too, is when you're dealing with these things. These things are never 100 leak free and you actually want to do them. Slowly, when you close them, because there's a little air pocket in there and when you shut it you'll notice. And if you want to know what i'm talking about um when you're putting nitrogen in a system right and you're, using a core removal tool.

And you shut it off when you take it off the system and you open the core removal tool with nothing on it. It'll go because that little pocket of air is stuck around the little ball thing in there. So it's really important to understand that when you're doing an evacuation, okay - and you always want to try to do a decay test - you know what not everybody's perfect, not everybody's gon na pull the absolute perfect vacuum. Just do your best and understand! What's going on in the system is the most important thing: do your best and understand if you don't pull a perfect vacuum, there's gon na be repercussions, okay, plugged up, filter, dryers or copper plating in the compressor different things like that.

Okay, now the field piece pump has got a little reservoir right here. Where you can see the oil - and i noticed my oil - is getting really cloudy. Okay and uh. The cool thing is, you can do an on the fly oil change, so you don't break the vacuum at all.

What we're gon na do is we're gon na open this guy right here. Okay, we're gon na drain this guy right here, the oil is draining into here and when it's done draining hold on i'm gon na go ahead and close that and then i'm gon na pour oil right in the top, get it to the max fill there. We go okay, so on the fly, oil change works really well and we're gon na. Let it run now we have been in decay, for i don't know 25 30 minutes.

It is slowly rising we're at 1030 1068 on that one, it's slowly rising, but it's not going to get much better than this. So this is how it's going to be again we're not going to obtain perfection with old uh oil in that compressor, you're just going to be pulling that out for days so um i'd, say the evacuation all together with the three hoses took about an hour and A half two hours uh, letting it run the initial pull down, came down to about 300 microns and uh. It's just been slowly rising, so there's just moisture in the oil. Again again, it's not going to be perfect unless we change the oil and that's not going to happen today.

So we're going to get ready to charge this guy right now, i'm just hooking up my probes and then we're going to go ahead and charge with the probes on this bad boy. So it's like this guy stalled out at about 11, 10 microns. So again, i'm i'm satisfied with that. So we're just doing the process of charging right now all right.

We're charging through we're. Looking for 16 pounds, five ounces, so we're just gon na let it keep running and uh. Once i get pressure in the suction side, it's coming around, so once it comes around we'll uh we'll take the micron gauge off it uh it took five pounds 12 ounces. Then i hooked it over to the suction side, and now i'm just metering it in we're.

Looking for a total about 16 pounds, 5 ounces total charge for this guy, so we're working on it um the unit actually satisfied. I had to put it into test mode up there, but anyways we're right at 16.5. I don't know why i'm getting some kind of interference again, but we're right at 16.5 um we're gon na. Let it stabilize out that sub cooling is out of whack because we're doing discharge pressure, we switch it up to the liquid line and you'll see the pressure drop across the condenser.

So so we'll look at it right now, 351.4 and uh 334. So you can see. There's a significant pressure drop and the sub cooling will calm down once we let it stabilize out now it is looking great um, the uh, the unit's running, pretty darn good. As far as my pressures go um approach, temperatures a little bit low, but sub cooling is looking decent um yeah, i'm a happy camper.

So this guy's good, there's, no more restriction across the filter. Dryer the expansion valve looks good. It's feeding properly, let's open it up and have a look nice good expansion valve feeding, nice and good. So this is the core, but look at it is solid plugged with gunk the mesh is done.

This dryer is crazy, dirty um! Now here's the deal. We did a repair, we changed a dryer and an expansion valve. I one of my other techs did it about. I don't know a year year and a half ago.

I think i think it was one of my other texts. I don't think it was me and um. I think that this is the oil in the system is completely just destroyed. Um, i believe, if you listen to the video too, the compressor didn't sound too healthy when it was running.

I think that that compressor is on its way out, so we bought them a little bit of time, maybe a month or two, but i'm gon na go ahead and try to talk the customer into a compressor replacement before this thing burns out. I think that what happened was the unit, if i remember right, ran for a while or it had a plugged up a messed up expansion valve for for a while, and i think that the damage was already done with it running. You know uh with a restricted expansion valve for so long, and i think that uh, it damaged the compressor then, and it's just been kind of running on borrowed time now i don't know how long it's been running with this plugged up. Filter dryer like this now because we're you know the restaurants were shut down for almost you know or not shut down, but they were barely operating without guests in their dining room for so long.

So they didn't even know that they had acs down and now that they're starting to have us, get in there and start cleaning them and get them operational and stuff yeah. Just this dryer is completely breaking down um, so yeah. I think that this compressor is on borrowed time. I believe that that's the compressor oil just uh, you know just crap - is traveling with the oil and it's completely plugging up the dryer.

So we're going to go ahead and talk to the customer again, i'm going to try to get him to go and let me replace that compressor, because this is going to lead to a burnout. I told you that the oil smelled a little funny, but it didn't smell burnt. You know, i just believe it's really cooked oil, just just trashed, so yeah compressor replacement time for sure yeah that one is uh dirty for sure. So um, like i said we had a uh, txv and dryer replacement.

It was a bad txv, not a plugged up dryer about a year year and a half ago, and i believe it ran for. If i remember right, i think it ran for a while, like that, before the customer approved it like it was, you know, restricted, so i think that the damage was already started. Then we went ahead and changed the txv in the dryer and it was working fine until now, again, i don't know how long it's been plugged up the way that it was today, because the restaurants are really just starting to use these air conditioners. So they've been down for who knows how long you know? Basically, i'm letting the customer know.

I got the unit operational, it's fixed right, it's running, but i wouldn't give it a month before that compressor burns out, because basically the oil in that system is just completely deteriorated. There's probably sludge basically forming in the bottom of the compressor. I didn't do an acid test on it. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if it's slightly acidic, but it didn't smell like it was burnt.

You know, or it didn't smell acidic, it's kind of hard to tell um, but i realized that there's no way to know for sure if it's acidic, unless you do a chemical test right but um, you know if this customer doesn't approve a compressor replacement. Now i can guarantee you they're gon na have a burnout in a month or two, because it's just gon na you know continue that oil is just gon na keep floating through the system, and if the oil is breaking down, as is that dirty, then it's not Lubricating properly we could have metal fatigue. You know i mean there. Just could be so many problems with it.

So it'd be best. If they let me do it now, but hey you know, that's their decision to make but anyways. So, let's start back at the beginning, we went through the unit. Initially the customer called and said: hey the thermostat's, not working so here's my theory.

I believe that the unit the thermostat, i should say, has been problematic for a while. I believe the thermostat was working, but you just couldn't control it or change it. I believe it was just kind of running on its own program, but just the touch screen wasn't working right. That's just a theory! Okay, because when the cusp, when the ac went down or the customer noticed that it was down, the first thing they do is go to the thermostat and it wouldn't work um.

So i came out looked at the thermostat because that's what they asked me to diagnosed. A bad thermostat because you couldn't adjust it, it wasn't locked, you know it was just you know, locked up, basically um and i replaced it, but then i went up onto the roof again. You can't just change the thermostat and walk away. You really need to look into everything big picture kind of stuff right, so um then went onto the roof found that the unit was acting kind of funny and found that you know we had a plugged up liquid line, filter dryer and there we go with the You know the video um the evacuation, something i want to touch on too.

I feel like not enough. People understand proper evacuation and i realized there's. You know you're not always going to have a perfect evacuation. It's just not going to happen, but i feel like there's too many people out there that think when the vacuum pump is running, if the micron gauge says 500 before you blank it off that you're done and that's not the case.

Okay, especially when you have the micron gas gauge in your manifold or placed in the wrong place right in series with the pump or something like that, you're gon na get an incorrect reading. So it's so important that you understand an evacuation and if you don't do a perfect evacuation, you understand the repercussions of what's going to happen now. I don't think that this is because of a bad evacuation. This filter dryer.

I believe this is a bigger issue. Okay, this is uh. This is a pretty big one, where i think the oil is just completely destroyed now uh, i'm confident that my techs pulled a vacuum, but if this would happen, if someone didn't pull a vacuum at all, if they were just purging the system, that kind of stuff Yeah, i could see this happening, but then you would also have non-condensables in the system, and you would see that in your refrigerant pressures, you'd often go off on high head pressure, different things like that. Okay, so um, this one was a fun one.

I like tearing this stuff apart when i'm done when i can, it doesn't always happen, but i like cutting open the dryer and really getting to the root cause, because once i open that dryer, then i know you know the compressor didn't sound good. Now i see the dryer that compressor is done. It needs to be changed for sure, okay, so hey. I really really appreciate you guys making it to the end video end of the video uh.

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