This video is brought to you by spore'ln quality, integrity and tradition. All right, we've got a call on a walk-in cooler that is not working properly. I don't know that I could zoom in, but that thermometer says 48 degrees right now. The coils are not iced up.

There's an interesting smell in here, though, we're gon na jump on the roof and start up there. My walk-in cooler compressors in this rack compressor is hot to touch, and it's not writing at the moment, but it's not. The breaker is on for the compressor right there. It's not good and huh yeah.

We better open it up. Alright, this is a single-phase compressor, we're gon na start with start with the pressure control pressure control has no voltage, so it's not an open pressure control. So now we need to check main power coming into the compressor alright. So, as I'm testing power, the compressor just turned on it has 208 volts going to it and the compressor just turned on like it was off on thermal overload.

So I need to put some service gauges on it and see. What's going on, that's my next step, I'm gon na turn it off, though real quick, so come over here. That's it right there. I set it down I'm a little concerned because this condenser fan motor is not running it's running backwards, but we'll find out in a minute.

I need to get some gauges figure out if it has refrigerant in it and that'll help me to understand a little bit more. It wasn't off on low pressure or high pressure, though we have equalized refrigerant pressures are pretty darn close to equalize. I've got my amp clamp on the compressor, we're going to go and power this guy up and see what happens. We're gon na watch it for a minute.

Current draw doesn't look too high at the moment: 7 amps. It says max 14.9. I think we're going off on high head pressure, look at how quick the head pressures climbing and we don't have a condenser fan motor running. I think our condenser fan motor might be the problem.

It's it's slowly climbing, but I have a feeling that this thing is running too high and it's an auto reset pressure control, Bria we're going off on head pressure, we're gon na figure out why that condenser fan motors not running so I powered down the compressor so That way, we're not running too hot right now and I'm just going to my condenser fan motor fuses, one by one we're gon na test them real, quick - and this is a 208 volt circuit. So we've got one bad fuse. I'm just going down the line that one's good - sorry, that's the frame rate of the camera, making it look funky that one's good, that one's good, that one's good that one's good. So we got one bad fuse right here, so we got to figure out what the amp is.

The aunt. You know that what the rating of the fuse is and we'll test the motor out. I went ahead and shut down the rack and I just pulled this capacitor down. It was mounted up on that rail and just investigating it.

I came inside here and turned out like I said I turned off the rack, there's no power and then I tested everything to ground on this guy. I went and changed the fuse, but I tested to ground to see if there was a direct short to ground and there was not whatsoever so before I do anything. I'm investigating this motor to see. If there's a reason, I don't want to turn power on and blow that fuse again, so I'm just investigating in here there's all kinds of stuff that it could be kind of shorted out anywhere.

So that's what we're just investigating everything to see if we can figure out a reason for it to blow a fuse looks like actually looks like there could be a direct short right. There there's a hole in the conduit. I mean there's so much stuff going on here. They've got way too much stuff crammed in that half inch conduit, that's ridiculous, but this is what I'm looking at right here.

I don't know if that's a short or, if that's just nothing, but it's just there's so much stuff crammed in there. So that's the power for the other condenser fan motor over there. So I don't know which one it is here. So the capacitor tests out good 10 microfarads, even though it doesn't look great at test good.

So we need to keep investigating to figure out where this short might be all right. It was a chore and I ended up peeling back all that conduit. It was all jacked up because of that hole. Now in doing so, I broke this wire right here, but that's not what I'm concerned about look right there.

That was where the hole was that was shorted out so in in pulling the conduit back. I busted that, because I was using my snips and I ended up doing that, but that was a short and that's what caused that hole. What's interesting, though, is that this? Oh there's another one right there, no that's similar! Never this red wire actually doesn't feed. This fan motor this red wire feeds this fan motor over here, which is not the problem at the moment.

So that's interesting we'll have to figure that one out, I'm thinking I pulled back. These are the wires for this motor right here and I pulled them back and I inspected them. I don't see any damage, but the reason why I jumped on this conduit is because I have experience with these things, and these conduits are always a problem. They're always bad the wires always get messed up inside.

There really should have new conduit ran, but right now we're in a pinch. We need to get them running and we can talk about doing new conduit later. So I need to fix this temporarily and then I think what I'm going to do is go ahead and replace that motor, because there's no electrical shorts. I found no reason for it to blow a fuse, nothing shorted to ground and there's no electrical shorts in the wire, so I'm gon na probably go ahead and replace the motor, eliminate the headaches and then hope that there's no internal damage to the compressor.

You know I used to fight these changing these condenser fan motors and then one day I just decided you know, there's got to be an easier way. It was a it shouldn't say. One day like there was a point in my career when I kind of just slowed down and started thinking and that's when I kind of developed the whole big picture, diagnosis thing and it's not something anything I invented, I mean anybody can do it, everybody does it. It's just that's my little, you know mantra I go by something as simple as getting these condenser families out.

I used to fight these all the time with these belly band brackets and trying to fit the wires through there and they're always tight when two seconds loosen up one of the bolts and look at that boom. I mean simple things like that: just stop! Take a step back and look at the big picture. It's usually if it's something difficult, you're, probably doing it wrong. I mean there's that weird instance, where you run into those things where it seems like the engineer just designed it to be a nightmare, but most stuff.

You know fighting these condenser families just move. Remove one bolt boom belly-band opens up slide the motor right out. You got to be smart, cut the bolts off the bottom of the motor, so you don't poke the condenser when you set it down in there and then, most importantly, if the unit has drain plugs, you take them off on the opposite end. So this motors gon na sit like this, so you leave the drain plug in the top and you take the drain plugs out the bottom.

That way, if condensation builds up in the motor it drains out the bottom and if it rains it doesn't go on the top all right, hack, work, temporary in full effect, went ahead and repaired. Everything extended everything, wire nut and everything put the capacitor over here. That way, it's not sitting underneath there secured everything temporarily. This is just a mess over here.

This will be part of my quote: to fix all this stuff clean it all up all that good fancy stuff, but I want to put it together and I hope that we don't have any problems with that compressor. Now, all right, we are ready to fire it up. Let's see, I can see the current draw, so this motors allowed to run 4.7 amps and we are ready to fire it up right now. So we're going to start with condenser fan motors.

That's fan motor. Now they actually are temperature controlled. So don't know if they'll turn on right now, yeah no condenser fan motors as of yet because they are temperature controlled. So we're going to go ahead and fire up compressors, not everything's on condenser fan motor is spinning in the right direction.

We're allowed to run 4.75 amps, so we're looking good I'll power it down just so. We can confirm that it's going in the right direction. I know it's gon na be hard on the camera, but it is currently going in a clockwise rotation, so that is correct and we're looking good. So this is a good temporary repair and then now my compressors running, I got to let it run for a bit.

Make sure the sight glass is running clear and make sure we don't have any problems and it doesn't shut off on thermal overload again we have been running for a good 20 minutes now the Box temps should be coming down, but we have got a flashing sight. Glass and it has been flashing the whole time and it's not cleared up, so we probably got a low charge on this bad boy too. This does have a head pressure. Control valve we are gon na have to go ahead and top off the charge and again we'll make that part of our quote to return and do a leak check and all that look at this.

They had some guys come out and install new ice machines for them, and I love how they just SJ Court, so the ice machine condensers all the way over here. Okay, it's really cool-looking how's nice seems very professional right anyways, so I'm gon na go get some refrigerant and we'll get that going all right. The sight glass is just about to clear up, I probably put in half a pound, but that is just what I would call the normal refrigerant charge. The fact that we're not below 180 psi means that our head pressure control valve is not bypassing right now, so we still need to add the entire flooded charge.

So if it's flashing above the bypass pressure of the head pressure control valve, then that means this thing is severely low on refrigerant. So once I clear it like it just cleared, so we got clear-site glass now, but now we're going to add the entire winter charge, which is going to be quite a bit of gas. So we're gon na add a couple pounds and then I'll pump it down and check the liquid level and then we'll go from there. It's like I've marked it here before and wrote 17 pounds.

That's the total charge public at this. It's like it's definitely leaking, but we start going to check the evals but, like I said, I'm not going to do that today. The condensers not too dirty a little bit, but not bad. Well, it's definitely leaking there.

It gets worse when I fronts you today so I'll put the cap on it, so I can check the liquid level, but we're definitely going to have to change the receiver, because you can't fix that packing plant on all right now we got to weigh the cylinder Weight 23 pounds before I brought it up that way. I know how much to sell them and we are coming down in Tampa. We got to go, follow up check on the box. It's like we're leaking right here, 2 on the top, but I did loosen that packing and they do do that when the packings are there.

So we've got to watch that we'll make sure if we do a follow up. If they want us to come back into a lead check, then you know what all the whole rack and everything it's gon na take a long time for it to come down to town things under a heavy load. When it comes to refrigeration oftentimes, you can't always do you know the the fix that you want to do, because the customer needs to be up and running, so obviously they called me out of desperation. This was the start of the virus like right before we even had to have masks on so they really weren't open right.

They were just serving to go food, so they this was the beginning. Everybody was still confused and they didn't even know they were allowed to call because of corporate rules and stuff long story short. They were, but by the time they called me, the Box temp was extremely high, so once I got there, I evaluated everything saw that there was an electrical short, but I've said this many times before I don't like to change fuses fuses. Do not go bad for no reason something causes the fuses to go bad, okay and I don't like to just go in there and slap a fuse and turn it on and see what happens now in this situation was extra critical, because I only had one fuse.

Normally, when I do fuses, I change them both and actually, when I do go back on the follow up once we get the quote approved, I am gon na replace both the fuses and fix all the conduit to, but to go back to the beginning. I only had one fuse, so I had to make sure that we got this right because I didn't want to run without fuses unless I absolutely had to okay. So I went ahead and tested everything for shorts to ground. Looking for issues, I found some chafed wires.

I ended up healing back that entire conduit and that was a mess cuz. I had to cut it piece by piece. I ended up damaging wires inside of it, but even still I was paying attention the entire time now I did find a wire that had rubbed out, but looking further into it. It actually didn't even go to my motor.

It went to another motor okay, so I didn't just stop there. I kept going once I found that I didn't see anything wrong with the electrical. The only other thing it could have been was either a capacitor issue or a fan motor issue. I tested the capacitor nothing wrong with the capacitor, so I went ahead and replaced the fan motor.

Now I have experience with this restaurant. I have experience with this particular rack and I knew to look at that conduit as an issue, because that's always an issue with these things, and you saw how many wires they had jammed inside that conduit and using that type of conduit to really they shouldn't have Done that, but using that type of conduit, the wires just sit there and rub and they chafe and then short out, but anyways. I did not find a short in the conduit, so I look towards the fan motor okay. The fan motor was an older fan motor.

I went ahead and made an educated decision kept. The customer in the loop talked to them made sure they were okay with it, and I suggested that we replace the condenser fan motor. Now I went ahead and did that. We still have to go back, though, because the temporary repair I made on that conduit is not going to last, and I did tell the customer that I called the facilities department and said: hey here's the deal.

I got your rack up and running, but we need to do this repair sooner than later, because what I did is just going to short out again without the conduit. Now the wires are rubbing against that the the ends for the conduit, basically, the little connectors the MX connectors. It's rubbing in weird places on those two, so they are gon na have more problems, so we got to get back out there, but what I started this with was in refrigeration. Sometimes you got to do what you got to do to get the customer up and running.

You have to make temporary repairs. Yes, I realized that some customers, if you make a temporary repair, they'll, never call you back. Luckily, I don't work for those kinds of customers. I know what my customers are gon na do and I know that they're gon na approve this repair.

I'm also willing to work with them and say: hey look. I know that times are tight, so you know I did this to get you up and running. That kind of stuff, so once we get the the repair I'll try to get some footage of that going back we're gon na end up, my quote is going to redo the electrical for the entire rack for all the condenser fan motors, even for yeah. For all three of the condenser families, basically, and then very likely when I do that I'll, probably go ahead and make a permanent repair to the ice machine electrical two that I showed inside there without even making an issue of it.

You know things like that, like I could bring it up to the customer and say: oh my gosh, this other company. They did a horrible job. I'd rather not I just I'd rather just fix it in this quote and just be done with it, and rather than raise hell when you that kind of stuff, you have to think about it as a business owner too, when you start, you know talking crap or Even if a company's doing something wrong, when you start pointing out flaws and stuff like that, oftentimes customers want to try to back build that customer and they'll hold off paying you. While our contractor they'll hold off paying me they'll tell me to fix it, but then they won't pay my bill because they want the contractor to pay and the contractor, and it just turns into something stupid.

So if I can make a repair - and it won't take me very long - and I could just fix the condo or add conduit to that ice machine I'll - just do it in this quo - that's what I would do so, but again big-picture diagnosis, guys. I can't stress that one enough, okay, I'm not an expert. I don't know everything I just like to try to figure things out: okay, compressors, they don't just go off on thermal overload, something caused it you don't just say. Oh man, let's see what happens, I mean you got to figure out why, in this situation it has an auto reset pressure, control, okay, auto reset sucks, but because it'll cause compressor damage basically overload the compressors on the flip side, though here in Southern California, in the Summertime, if we didn't have auto reset pressure controls, I kid you not.

Every weekend I'd be resetting pressure controls when we have our heat waves, when we hit 110 120 degrees we'd be out there reset and pressure controls all day long. So it's one of those things you got to have Auto reset on there or just create so many nuisance service calls all right enough babbling. I really appreciate you guys taking the time to watch this video. Remember that I do live streams Monday evening 5:00 p.m.

Pacific time work, permitting, of course, where I discussed these videos answer. Questions feel free to send me questions anything you guys got I'll try to hit answer it on the live stream. If I can also have my new tools, channel HVAC our tools, new content, coming on that soon and yeah - that's pretty much it we'll catch, you guys on the next one: okay.