This video is brought to you by Sporland. Quality, integrity and tradition. Fear walking that's not working. The lighting is all weird in here today, but a temperature controller says 49 degrees.

There's no ice on the coils so that means we need to go up to the roof and see what's going on at the refrigeration rack. Climb up the roof ladder to get to this. What the Flip Man store and all their stuff? Well, two options I Stomp on it I bend it I break it all or I politely move it I think I'm gonna be nice today and just move it for him instead of ruining it all. but I kind of want to just stomp on it all and break it all all right.

here's my rack. Um, let's scroll on over here. It's a warm day today. It's not hot.

We really haven't hit any hot days yet here in Southern California Currently June 15th and it's warm. But all right, let's get up here and that rack is completely plugged up. Compressor is not running, receiver's cold I'm kind of scared. Ooh if it was off in high pressure you would expect that breaker doesn't seem to be tripped.

Okay, defrost clock It's system. C It's not in Defrost. it's in refrigeration mode. System C is pulled in though.

That's scary. All right. let's come on over here and have a C have a look what this compressor is doing. Compressor's red hot dang it! Check the low pressure control it is not open or dual pressure control.

Come over to the compressor and from one leg to one leg we have 201 volts. Let's go ahead and go to another 201 and then let's go to this one 200 volts. So we have three phase power going to this compressor. It is not running I'm hoping it's off on overload.

The condenser is plugged. I'm gonna go get a water hose, a compressor cooling tool. We're gonna cool this guy off. We should be able to check to see if it resets at the compressor contactor.

The other concern that I have is that this condenser fan motor is not running It should be, but it also depends on what circuit is connected. This pressure control goes to one of the fan motors. they wire in series. There's a pressure control on each one of those.

one, two, three, three of them and they make the condenser fan motor stage on and off. I Think that the condenser fan motor for this guy is uh is I Think these two share the same condenser fan motor so we'll have to check that too if we come over here. This is my condenser fan motor contactor, my condenser family, or contactor. It looks like they're all wired in together because there's only one contactor and it feeds both sets of fuses for both condenser fan motors.

So the top of this one has 201 volts. So that's one fan motor and the top of this one has 201 volts. That's the other fan motor, but that's the line side. Let's go to the load side.

We have no voltage coming out those fuses and let's go to this other fuses and we have voltage coming out of these fuses. So this condenser fan motor number one has power. Let's go across this guy. it's not open.

Let's go across this guy and it's open. 201 volts. We're measuring because the fuse is open. so we also have a bad fuse, which could be a bad fan motor.

We don't know. Um, yeah. and actually look at this. These connection families run all the time.

They don't even stage because someone has these wire nuts right here so it looks like those yellow wires used to run to those uh, pressure controls and I don't know why they're disconnected. I'm not going to start connecting those back right now. Right now we're just going to get these operational. So we're going to go ahead and shut this equipment down.

We're gonna shut down the whole rack and we're going to, uh, get my compressor cooling tool, my water hoses, my coil, cleaner, and stuff and we're going to try to cool this off and get this compressor restarted. Hopefully. Came over here, pulled the side panels off I Haven't gotten my tools yet, but just looking at the condenser fan motor I Mean it spins, don't don't seem too crazy. Everything seems okay.

Uh, loosened up the capacitor strap which I'm not a huge fan of those and we're going to pull this capacitor out and test the capacitor capacitor looks like it's testing good. Okay, now let's look at the wiring and uh I pulled the cover off I Don't see anything scary I mean wires don't look too too bad, but you know these can be deceiving because sometimes there's little weird shorts in these things. Um, interesting. I'm not seeing anything.

Okay, well I'm going to shove it back in there and we'll get a Mega we'll make that guy. I mean the wires look pretty good here. There's a Grommet right there. The capacitor wires didn't look bad I don't see any Nicks Everything seemed okay with that.

We have gotten some rain lately, but oh wait a minute, are the drip plugs missing from the motor? Oh man. the drip plugs are taken out of the top of the motor, but they're in the bottom. so there's drip plugs down here. Let me guess if I can get it out, there's a drip plug right there.

So when you have a motor mounted like this, you should have the drip plugs taken out of the bottom and left in the top so that we have condensation builds up. It drains down the bottom. So both of the drip plugs I think yeah, they've been taken out of the top so the top is open, but the motor is closed on the bottom so theoretically it could fill up with water. That's not good.

Still, don't know if that's the only cause though. All right. I Got my hoses and everything up here getting ready to cool this guy off and I got my compressor cooling little nozzle thing on there. I'm gonna come over here and this guy actually has tone across the legs there there and there.

so we have continuity. so if it was off on overload I didn't get to check it yet until now I haven't cooled anything I just shut the compressor off. So now what we need to do I don't have condenser fan motors running, but I'm just going to start it up just to see if the compressor starts. Um, yeah, let's just do it and see what happens.

It started up and it's running okay, so that's a good sign. So I'm gonna go ahead and shut it off and we're going to go ahead and clean the rack. so it was off on overload more than likely, but it just reset in between me getting all this stuff. So I'm going to go ahead and clean the rack.

but I tell you what before. I clean the rack. I'm going to go ahead and run the compressor cooling tool just to get any residual cooling I can out of that thing because I want to Meg out this motor and see if we have any shorts before I mess with anything else. Okay, hold the fuses, there's no power.

We've set the insulation tester to 500 volts. This is a 250 volt system and we're going to test this guy greater than 550. Mega Ohms Okay I mean I don't think there's a problem. so I don't know what caused it to blow the fuse.

Now test it again. It should be the same because the windings are connected so we look good as far as that goes. So what caused this guy to blow a fuse? I Don't know. Um I don't know if there's moisture in the motor? I mean I don't know when that motor was changed.

It's an old motor. It's been there forever. We had rain forever ago. Um I don't see any issues I mean you know, sometimes there is little spots in here.

little weird things. Probably recommend replacing the motor. Eliminate that from any question. Um, we had like drizzle this morning though.

So I don't think it's really enough to get in there. and if it was full of water when I pulled the plugs from the bottom, you would have seen drip drip come out so it's not like it's saturated in there. Huh? I Don't know. Okay, well, we're gonna clean the condenser now.

I've got that running on there just for Giggles it reset already but I'm just helping to keep it cool and I'll get my wand out and we're going to rinse this condenser off proper, right? We're going to start by a pre-rinse You always want to pre-rinse the coil. Get the bulk of the debris off the big stuff. Using a wand like this is amazing. It's just a wand from Lowe's You can get it from any hardware store.

This one's nice though because it has a rubber head on the end so you can drag it across the coil carefully and it doesn't damage anything. Um, so I'm just pre-rinsing You got to be careful. I Always say to put these front panels on. Um, if you don't put them on, you just got to make sure that you're not.

Water is not pouring out the front because it just splashes on the pressure controls and while they can handle some, you don't want to saturate them. So I'm kind of being lazy right now, but I'm just pre-rinsing getting it uh, kind of wet and then we'll put coil cleaner on it and do all that stuff. I think I'm gonna have to put these covers on too because I'm gonna have to rinse the front, but it's just that time of the year for us. I I don't think it's really Cottonwood but it's very similar to it.

It's like a pollen that is just floating in the air and I kid you not I'll clean this this week and then next week it'll be plugged up again. it's just miserable. Tend to notice it more by the freeways and all that good stuff. The other thing too.

I've shown this a million times. You want to make sure this is a trough that this wand is touching right now to keep the water off the compressors and it fills up with all the sediment that we wash out of the coil. so you want to make sure you're getting that out. So I'm still pre-rinsing to get as much of the bulk off as I can and then I'll get coil cleaner on it.

Lovely already applied coil cleaner. I'm just rinsing it off now and it's just coming out nasty. The bottom of the thing just tons and tons of dirt. So I'm going to do a bunch of rinses because I got a bunch of coil cleaner on there.

These things are always a pain, especially when they don't do like routine maintenance too. but it's already looking a lot better A lot better. just some little boogers and stuff to get off. So I'm gonna keep working on it.

I'm at the point where I'm cleaning out the trough, just rinsing it from up here flushing it, you know? I already stuck my hand up there pulled out a bunch of stuff, but it's just pure black stuff coming out of there because it's all just the dirt and mud. and Cottonwood whatever that it's not. Cottonwood I don't know what you call it but pollen. whatever.

it's nasty, so there's a there's a clean out on the other side too, all the way over there, so that one seems to be draining. Pretty good. There's a big old booger right here. It's all nasty up there.

Look at the stuff I'm pulling out of there. That's nasty. Gross. All right.

Just getting back. We're gonna go ahead and change out this motor. I've said it before, but this bag is badass. Ctxl from Veto holds so much.

I've got a half horsepower condensed fan motor bandsaw, some wire in there brought up refrigerant in those things before. These things are awesome. If you're interested, uh, check out Truertechtools.com Use my forgot big picture. You get an eight percent discount on most of the items on their website and then I get a small commission.

Kind of helps the channel. Um, all right. Well, I'm not gonna play with it I'm just going to pull that motor out I've got a new Hub and everything. I'll show you guys we're going to put in a new motor and we'll assemble this guy, start it back up and hope that everything's hunky-dory Hope that compressor runs I Mean we only saw it run for a minute, but try to get this motor changed out first.

fan guard off. but check this out. the hubs are on backwards. I'm wondering why why the heck would they be on backwards like that? because there's screws on the other side.

Usually you can just pull the fan blade off. Well, hopefully I can get that thing off I Don't know if it's because of the orientation of the motor I don't know. All right. Well we'll see instead of fighting it.

I'm going to see if I can just pull this bolt out and Slide the motor out. put something down metal because those studs you need to cut them off but someone didn't so the motor could slide down and you know puncture the coil. So always want to think about the worst case scenario what can happen and try to prevent it. I Was starting to get worried that I put this motor in and didn't put those plugs in the right spot.

but I would never do this. Put the Hub on the wrong side. I Still can't figure out why they would have done that. There's plenty of room on the bottom of the shaft.

it's just a headache. The whole purpose of these Universal hubs is you can easily just change out a blade, you just undo a couple screws and you don't got to worry about sanding the shaft and everything. It's just dumb. So I gotta try to get this off because someone cut it with a grinder which is fine, you know, but the problem is is that it might be burned out so getting it off is going to be a nightmare.

All right. Got the new motor ready, got the Hub put on it, got it on the right direction. So now I just set the blade down and put the screws through it and we'll be good to go. Just like that.

Okay, I Filed down the shaft I cut it with a band saw right there and then filed it down so that way it'll slide back off. Uh, drip drain plugs are back in the top and they're not at the bottom. and I know what happened here because this one didn't have drain plugs in the top so they require you to pull them out of the bottom and put them in the top. and in the past they used to have them on both sides so someone probably was just moving along.

But I don't think that's what killed that motor. Uh, I think because the motor sounds like it has bad bearings when you spin it, but I wasn't going to take a chance. we're just changing it. Um, but uh yeah, when you spin it, I'll pull it I'll try to pull it apart in a minute but when you spin it, it sounds like the bearings are just rough inside there.

So we're gonna set this guy down in there right now and get the blade put on it. All right. We got the capacitor installed. Um, we're not wired in here yet because I'm about to pull all new wire.

Uh, we'll clean this up in a minute. This ground is getting deleted because I have a ground going all the way back to the panel connected right there on the motor. All right. I went and just grabbed some new wire.

I'm gonna try to make a home run all the way to the motor. so I have enough here. I'm pulling it through the panel over here and then uh I Went ahead and cut off all this stuff in here where the wire nuts were and there's nothing wrong with wire nuts. but I'm going to try to make it a home run if I can.

So I'm going to get it into this conduit over and directly into here. I got the capacitor already mounted I got the ground from the panel coming all the way over running through here. It'll all clean up when I'm done. so check it out! I Pulled the wire out of that conduit that was running all the way over there.

Bam right there. That was my short. The trust your gut when you're doing this stuff and these conduits. It doesn't matter if it's seal tight or MX conduit, the vibration of everything causes the wires to rub out.

So trust your gut and always suspect conduits and wire and stuff. So I'm going to pull this wire back through now. so if installed correctly, see those screws. You take those three screws and you just lift the whole fan blade off.

Then you slide the motor out. I Keep extra hubs in my van to make the change out easier. so we're all wired in here connected in there. It's a home run from the fuses all the way to right here.

We still got to check rotation, we're all put in here. There's no handy box cover for this so we'll have to bring one of those back. but we got to come back anyways because maybe you guys already caught it. but I didn't catch it.

Look at that for the other condenser fan motor. they're going into the top of that fuse. So I'm assuming that fuse is bad. which kind of worries me because there was an extra fuse right here that I use for this.

So I need to make sure that that fuse is good. but we're wired all the way in here so we're still going to have to come back and dive in. I'm not. It's like, uh, what is it? It's 5 30.

it's already. We go into overtime at four so I'm not looking to be here all night doing this I just want to get this one running so we'll see. Um So I need to check those fuses real quick. All right.

One, two three. please don't blow up All right Mitch Fan motors are running and we're allowed to run 3.2 amps. We're running 2.67 now. Granted I don't have the panels on yet.

This one has a you know what we're gonna need to uh, this one's vibrating. The whole motor is just because the blades like out of balance. We'll have to deal with that. I'll tell them to create a separate work order for that so that way I can close this one out.

Oh you know what? I need to shut it down and pull this off though because that's gonna vibrate and drive. Everybody has that hose clamp. All right here we go. System A Those two I don't even think are actually used because it says ice machine and uh, they have remote ice machine condensers now not in this rack or D gotta do this carefully.

you don't want to overload anything. So B and this one's our breaker right here. All right, we are running all right. I'm gonna put some.

please don't tell me there's a problem with it I'm gonna put some gauges on it. it's gonna be under a low too. so I'm gonna slap some gauges on it and we'll check it out. I Also got to screw in all these panels too.

All right, it is running that's a little hard away. Side Glass ER It's like bubble bubble every once in a while. Just barely got some bubbles in it. but I'll give it a few more minutes I Bet you anything it'll clear we're looking good here.

Uh, this unit does not have a head pressure control valve. Someone has bypassed it don't know why so we don't need to worry about the flooded charge. so I'm just going to watch it for a little bit. I'm just kind of putting stuff away, putting my tools away, I Got a giant mess over here just cleaning up my tools and everything.

So yeah, we'll uh, we'll jump down in the Box here in a few minutes and then I'll definitely be bringing up to them about that other condenser fan motor fuse. All right, check it out! So this back bearing is bad. Notice when I spin it, it just drags and then if I go to the front I spin it and it flows. It moves a lot better than this one that just stopped.

So that was the sound that I was hearing. but you can clearly see that this thing had a bunch of water in it too. You can see rust right here and then look at the bottom right here. So yeah, that's what happens when the the motor plugs are in wrong.

But the bearing I mean I Guess that could have been it too because it could have. uh no. I don't think the bearing would have gotten wet because I don't see anything in here. This looks fine, but all right Again, always trust your gut.

If you feel like something's possibly going to be a problem, just change it. So and just you know, trust yourself. especially if you're experienced. Um, connections right here don't look the greatest either.

Yeah, this guy had a lot of water in it at one point. I'm surprised it actually dried out and restarted. It's pretty crazy, all right. Well, it's cleanup mode so you never want to jump the gun.

Give it time for the sight glass to clear. That one's good. All right. I'm not seeing anything too crazy.

Uh, we're about what 20 and some change for saturation condensing temp over ambient 70 degrees? 75 degrees somewhere in there? Yeah, so we're good. I'm not seeing any problems. Everything right and we are down to temperature. everything's running.

We're gonna be back. We're gonna fix that other vibrating motor All right. We are back today. Um, what I ended up doing is I ended up coming back.

Uh, pulling this motor, changing the motor and the blade because it was vibrating. pretty bad. Okay, don't want to trust it. Bearings were probably damaged inside there.

relocated the capacitor, ran new wire to the motor all the way back here. Did a home run just like before. fixed up the wiring, actually zip tied it all back together as best as possible, right? I Mean it's polishing a turd over here, but went ahead and put all new fuses now I think I realized I'm wondering if something happened with that screw because when I went to go with the wires I did everything and I realized there's not a screw. but luckily there's a little uh flag connector there that you can put a slip-on guy.

Not the greatest, but you know it is what it is. Put all new fuses, left some spare fuses, and now we're going to turn this guy on and hope that it doesn't blow up. Okay, so here's the deal. I Wired in the Um fan cycle switches.

so condenser fan motors now should not run until. uh. compressors turn on and you know pressure gets high enough then it should close the fan cycle switches. So all I should have to do here is turn on.

Some compressors and fans should turn on here. Just a minute, they just turned on. Vibration has calmed down. now.

this one has a different rotation on the blade so I need to make sure it's going in the right direction. We're going to give it a second to shut off just watching it. and yeah, it's going in the right direction I Just want to see it slow down a little bit more. the other one's going in the right direction.

For some reason it's tripping me out, but it's correct so we're good to go on that one last time and it's correct. Okay, so condenser fan motors are good. running like they should be. They're fan cycling now.

Compressors are good. We had to run water on it while I was doing this. We're going to get the lid put on and we're going to check current on that motor. We are allowed to run 3.2 amps.

We're at 2.6 on one motor and these are both brand new Motors and the other one was amping correct the other day. but I can't get on it right now. but we're good so that is it. This is back in operation.

It's wired back in with the fan cycling like it should be. Um, there was some extra Breakers that weren't being used I took those out and eliminated them to clean up the panel. Um, that's pretty much it. This rack is back together.

The vibration has calmed down significantly. The rack's not shaking anymore. Motors are spinning doing what they're supposed to be doing so we're good to go. It's really important that you trust your gut when you are going through these repairs now.

Um, of course. Another thing that I want to explain right? These videos do not show everything. They do not show the entire process. They do not show procedures from A to B I show highlights.

Okay, another thing that these videos do not show is my conversations with the customer. This particular customer is very, very good with listening and approving what I suggest. Now you know you may think that I didn't need to pull the wire out of the second motor, but it's a really easy task when you have everything out and it's easier to just get it done. These particular Refrigeration Racks I have like eight of these exact racks and after so much time with the vibration from the condenser fan motors, the wires rub out inside the conduits and it's very, very common that we have to pull new wire instead of chasing a ghost changing fuses.

Hmm I Don't know, Is it the motor? I Don't know. My customer is good with me nipping the problem in the butt. Okay, so in this situation I Had a feeling that we were going to have some damage in the motor because of the the plug orientation, the little weep hole plug right and then on top of that, the second motor was vibrating because of a Bent Blade but when they vibrate, they can cause internal damage on the bearings. Both the motors were about the same age.

They were like if I had to guess three or four years old. it was just time. So with the customer's approval I went ahead and pulled new wire, redid everything. New Motors New Blade on the left one did not put a new blade on the right one.

probably should have done that in hindsight, but you know it's fine. it'll be fine. Everything's good. The hubs are on the correct side, right? The person before put the hubs on the wrong side, defeating the purpose of the hubs I don't understand that one but went ahead and took care of that compressor was able to reset and everything seemed to be working fine with that.

But keep in mind every time a compressor goes off on thermal, it tends to cause pitting inside the overload because the overload is opening and closing and when that happens it can lead to pitting inside of there, which eventually can lead to nuisance thermal overload trips or high resistance in the thermal overload. That can cause overheat situations at the same time too. Okay, low voltage, different things like that. So it's not a good idea for a compressor to be going on and off on thermal overload.

it's really not a good idea. And I've got lots of videos cutting them open showing the thermal overloads. So best advice I can give to everybody out there is trust your gut. you have the skills and the knowledge to repair this equipment right? I'm sure you guys that are watching this probably have some different ways of doing what I did and that's okay.

It's okay for us to have different viewpoints and it's okay for us to have different ways that we approach problems. This is just how my brain works and how I approach these problems. Okay I really appreciate you guys making it to the end of this video. Thank you so very much! Remember, if you haven't already, check out my website Hvacrvideos.com We have merchandise available on there.

Lots of different hats. Um, Also, if you're interested in purchasing any tools, go check out Truetechtools.com I Have an affiliate link offer code: Big picture right? If you use my offer code Big Picture: One word on checkout on most of the items on their website. you'll get an eight percent discount. I Get a small commission from that.

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That's the easiest way. Okay PayPal Patreon YouTube Channel Memberships: Those are all different methods. There's links in the show notes of the video for that again. I Really, really appreciate you guys.

Remember to be kind to one another and we will catch you on the next one. Okay.