This video is brought to you by Sportland Quality, Integrity and tradition. So we've got a compressor for this unit, a disconnect switch for this unit, and I Brought my entire van up here. Got another technician working with me today. He's currently getting water hoses thrown over the side of the building because we were here 3 weeks ago and this condenser is already pretty dirty.

So we're going to clean that. Um, we got to get the disconnect switch, recover or changed out first because the plan is once we get the disconnect switch changed out, we can energize the unit for most of the work and just be working on the third stage compressor. and they still have cooling. But we got to clean this condenser too.

And then while he's down there turning the hose on, I'll have them turn off the power. We'll get that replaced, get it back on. trying to be as efficient as possible. Got the new compressor sitting over there.

We had to go back with an LG compressor because this is actually under warranty through the manufacturer so we got to use their compressor. I Would have rather put in a Copeland and be done with it, but got to do what you got to do when it's under warranty, right? All right. So we're changing this guy because potentially it had a loose connection causing an overheat situation. It's charred and I don't want to trust the internals of that guy.

Got a new one they went back to the old manufacturer. AB Um, so we'll get this guy in now. This is just an 80 amp safety switch. This does not have any, uh, overcurrent protection.

It's just a switch. Even though it says 80 amps on it, that's just the the current that it can handle. Um, same thing with the big giant uh Square D ones that they had in here. Those were not overcurrent.

they were just. they look like circuit breakers. but they're not. They were just safety switches.

So we're going to get this guy swapped out. Um, now this does have some burnt wire right here. but there's extra wire in the unit so I'll be able to pull it out. You always want to leave extra as long as it's not going to be a potential um, electrical Hazard like it's going to rub out or anything I always leave a little service loop.

So that way in this situation, you have extra wire now. I Already verified that we don't have any power, but I'm going to double check just one more time. but we are safely shut off and locked out downstairs. Nothing, Nothing, nothing and we'll go to ground real quick.

Nothing. I'm checking to the wire cuz I already loen the terminals. Nothing. no voltage so we're good to go.

Good to unhook. Now This is a D rail mount. It has a little clip you pull off on the bottom. same thing on this one.

Okay, so this guy, like I said we have extra wire so we're going to pull the extra down cut back to Burnt spot. I'd say about right here should be good. Yeah, it's nice and soft right there. That's about right.

That's the bad spot right there, so make sure you don't Nick the wires. Yeah, looks good. that's why I don't go all the way through the insulation I kind of break it off by hand for the remainder, smashing the wire down. but I'm not going to torque down on it cuz I'll use a torque driver for it if there's even a torque spec on here.

I'll have to see. All right? So um, it says to set the torque driver at 18. So I'm using the Weha torque driver see how low it goes there we go 18 right there. let's go a and torque this guy down.

Now it's a ratch it in It tells you when it's tight there, we go there, we go there, we go. Yep, all right, we're all torqued down. We're good to go. nice and tight.

We'll put the cover on and turn power back on. All right. let's go ahead and turn power back on. I'm going to test Power 207, 206 203 We're good to go.

Come on back up. All right. there is going to come a time when we have to shut this entire unit down when I go to change the liquid line filter dryer in here for the meantime though I still have work to do I got to recover the charge, start getting sanded and everything. So I put the unit into test mode and just basically basically I'm going to freeze them out of the building right now.

I'm going to just run it as much as possible on full cooling. So that way once we, uh, we, um, are ready to shut it down. you know, for the half hour 45 minutes that we have to have it shut down, it'll be minimal. try to keep them as comfortable as possible.

Basically one thing that I noticed though, look at this when you're in a test mode. full call for cool. It doesn't. uh, ramp up to full speed on the Vft.

We're running at 37 Htz so that's a flaw in the unit. Keep that in mind I'm pretty sure that this Vfd was installed after the fact and it's probably not programmed right. Um, some of these units because in California we have something called Title 24 which is an extra government regulation that everything has to be like this Energy Efficiency stuff. So these units a lot of times are pre-made and they don't necessarily all come with the two-speed blower operation like we require in California for anything over I think it's uh, is it anything over 5 tons? I think I think it is.

you have to have a two-speed blower operation so on first stage it runs at a lower speed. second stage it runs at a higher speed cuz theoretically you need more air flow for two stages than you do for one stage. um I think it's 5 tons. but anyways.

So we have this two-speed blower Vfd right here. so it actually all it does is when you get a call for Second Stage IT ramps up to full speed and then on first stage it only ramps down to you know, half speed or whatever. I'm curious though, if I go back, let's go back and let's change it to three stages of cooling. Let's see if it ramps up.

Yeah, see on three stage it ramps up to full speed. Interesting on two stage and I know stage is confusing to people. We only have two stages according to the thermostat first and second stage, but up at the unit it has logic built inside of it. You've got first stage, second stage, third stage.

Um, so the thermostat only gives you inputs for two stages. but that's an interesting thing is that if you call for compressor 3, it goes to full speed. but if you call for compressor 2 and compressor one, it only goes to low speed. H Keep that in mind when you're troubleshooting.

Another thing, when these units have Vfds, do Not Ever push in the blower contactors. Now this one, the wiring has been disconnected, but if you push in the blower contactor and it's still wired in, you'll blow up the Veh. Um, Okay, so we're going to get the recovery machine out. we'll get this one turned off and then we'll uh, get recovering on that third stage.

All right, we are getting ready to recover. I Used the HVAC School app and calculated the total fill weight based on the ambient temperatures and the density of the refrigerant and the the size of that tank and our max weight on that tank will be 61 lb, 61.6 7 lb. That's tank weight and refrigerant. Okay, and we're currently at 40 lb right now 41 so we got plenty of room.

This thing only holds like 8 lb of gas. We'll monitor it if we have to. We'll put a water hose on it and cool the tank off. but I think it's cool enough outside right now.

it's not quite hot yet. Next thing. I've got my high flow Shraer core depressors. Now, these are not core removers.

These are made from appion. You basically squeeze them in. they they depress the um, the what do you want to call them Cormax fittings the high flow sters right? Cuz you can't remove those and work on the system. you know, proper.

L Um, I Also removed the ends of my hoses because I don't have shraer depressors right here. Notice there's a Shraer depressor. that's a restriction. Makes it go a little bit slower because I got a full tank here that already has refrigerant.

That's why I'm doing that normally I Don't really worry about that too much. Next, we got a purge. So we're going to open this guy up. this guy up and then now I always leave that one loose and we just purged all the way through the system through here.

So we're going to, uh, just go ahead and turn on the recovery machine and start recovering. So at this point, we're ready to go. We're open here. We're open here.

What's leaking? Something's leaking there. We go all right, and then go ahead and uh, start on that guy and we're recovering. Just keep an eye on it, making sure that we're not going over the max charge because we don't want to create a bomb in the back of our. Vehicles When the temperature outside gets to 110 and that tank temperature gets to above 130 deges, then you could potentially have a catastrophic rupture.

So um, we don't want that to happen so well actually I Guess it probably would take a little bit more than 130, but you've got your rupture valve right here. So all right, so we're going to let this recover. It'll take a little bit, we're going to start sanding everything up and just kind of getting ready. Oh, that's why.

Okay, never mind I was tripping out because it's it said low pressure for compressor 3 and I was like but I disconnected the high pressure control but the system pressure is just low. that's why. Okay I was thinking they had a problem. There we are at the point where it's time to start brazing.

Now, what I'm going to do is we're going to shut the unit down and do the dryer first, so that way we can put the cover back on and start the unit back up. We can braze this compressor all day long with power on. but I've got condenser fan motor running over here right? so we don't want that. So we're going to go and take this unit out of test mode and it's actually calling for three stages of cooling right now.

So um, we're going to go Ahad and turn it off and then, uh, notice that when we shut it off, you don't hear these other compressors bypassing. See this one when you shut it off starts making those weird squealing sounds and squeeing sounds. it's an LG thing. It's just, in my opinion, gone off an internal bypass way too many times and it damaged the pressure relief inside.

I don't know what LG calls theirs, but anyways, they can lose efficiency that way too because under high pressure situations, it starts to slightly bypass and then you lose compression ratio and just lots of issues. But anyways, Um, so we're going to get this cover pulled off and try to get this dryer swapped out. I've got a nitrogen ready to go and actually already sweeping through the system. All right.

So uh, they came to their senses and decided to start using Sporin Catchalls for their Uh OEM dryers now so that is awesome. Um, got some uh Viper heat blocking Compound on there to protect the dryer even though this has the extended connection so that's cool. Uh, made sure that I traced out the proper lines to make sure we got the third stage all the way back. I Went ahead and cut it out cuz we got a lot of room in here.

so I'm going to fit this guy, get it clamped and we're going to get it brazed in. Yeah, we got the nitrogen flowing Dryer's going in the right direction. We're good to go here. Oh N n all right, all done brazing that we're going to cool it off.

we still got nitrogen flowing through again because I have someone else with me had him putting that panel on while I was doing this and then he's going to put the crank case heater on and I'm going to get the evacuation stuff ready to go. Currently doing a pressure test with nitrogen right now. So far looking good. Uh, the S Man 480v manifold has the tightness test built into it where it does a timer.

You can also do temperature compensation if you put the suction temperature clamp on somewhere. It'll compensate based off of the temperature change of the suction line. but I'm not too worried about that right now. Um, so we're running the pressure test.

We're also testing the crank case heater before I hook it back up. make sure we have resistance across it cuz I didn't know if it was working properly or not. Um, we'll also do a current test once we get it hooked back up, but the fact that we see resistance is a good sign. So we're going to put that back in and then we're actually going to going to start this guy back up.

and uh, we'll pull the evacuation and stuff with the unit running. Um. next actually too I'm going to open up this compressor contactor have a look inside there. I mean I I See a little bit of dark colored something in there, but honestly, it doesn't look bad.

I don't see a reason to change that contactor. Nothing looks bad about that. So we're going to put the cover back on. we'll leave it be and uh, we'll get the evacuation started all right.

I'm impatient but I don't it. It dropped 2 in 5 minutes. I'm not worried about that. I'm confident that we're good to go.

so we're going to go ahead and vent this this is just nitrogen and then we'll get the evacuation running. Make sure this guy's turned. that guy's unhooked already. so got the vacuum pump already ready.

Get the micron gauge and everything out. We've got the unit turned back on and it's cooling. So now they have a call for y1 and Y2 But even though we got third stage disconnected, we got the micron gauge on there. We're pulling an evacuation.

Got the blue Vac opened up? We're watching that happen. We're going to let this run for a bit, clean up some of our messes, and probably take a lunch, so we're doing good. It's looking good. So far, this is our evacuation Target On the green 500 microns and this is the maximum Decay Target of 1,000 microns.

So we're slowly getting there, which is expected I Just closed the gas bance a few minutes ago. But what I suggest you do on these things is always agitate the compressor because the nitrogen pressure test could have uh, saturated the oil with nitrogen and the nitrogen that was in the system before. So always do that and you're going to see a spike when you do that and that's normal. But then after the spike you typically see a dramatic drop.

so it takes a second you see it's still climbing but then you'll usually see it just kind of Boom pull back down and I'll have to do that a couple times just to kind of agitate the oil, getting all the non-condensables out of it nitrogen out of it cuz that's pretty much all that's going to be in there because this is a dry system. So and there's that drop. Now notice you're seeing the drop come down. That's pretty typical.

So I like to do that a couple times. agitate it. We also have the crank case heater running on it too. So now this is a warranty compressor.

so I got to return it now. I Don't think they're going to want it back, but you always assume they're going to right? So if you didn't already know, as long as you don't have gobs of solder, you can actually get these plugs back in if you use a Philips head screwdriver and when it pushes in the middle, it presses it and then it's back in. So I got them both back in. Um, and you know that should be more than enough.

That way they can do whatever they want to do. If they do, ask for it back. All right. Just got back from lunch.

Measure Quick is telling me to isolate the system so it can go into Decay so we're going to close this close this. We are now in Decay mode and it is going to give me a past fail on Decay here in just a minute. Um now you see if I zoom out it seems like it drops straight down. That's because I went to lunch like it passed the Decay test.

so it uses the algorithm to tell you VI he uses the algorithm to tell you that it actually passed so that's cool. Perfect! so we know where. evacuation good. It's currently at 439 microns and Rising but it basically just looks at the the rate of rise and it calculates that after so much time, it won't be above 1,000 microns.

I Like that about the digital stuff cuz you don't have to sit here and wait. Um, so all right, we're going to get this thing shut off and get ready to go and charge this guy up. All right. I Have got it charged up and everything is running.

All three compressors are now running. They've been running for about 10 minutes I'm all probed up with all my probes so let's scroll on through here. So first stage did I just Lo Okay, yeah, first stage sub coin's about 15. but remember, we're using discharge pressure so that can kind of skew the numbers a little bit.

I Don't see anything crazy here. Superheat. You know where it expected to be. Second stage: Super Heat's a little bit High Sub cooling is a little bit low.

We might need to look into that a little bit. It might be a little under charge for the second stage. Let's go to our third stage cuz that's one we changeed the compressor on. Super Heats 14 That's that mean not too bad.

Expansion valve still kind of ranging. Sub cooling is about 17. Nothing too crazy. Let's scroll on over.

it's about 86 ambient right now. Discharge line temp is relatively decent at 163. Uh, temperature splits right on the money 19 and we're calling for 19.2 Remember, temperature split across the return and Supply is not always 20 dependent on your outdoor conditions. Uh, well.

your relative humidity, your indoor conditions. that number is going to change. Okay, as the humidity goes up and down, the required temp split is going to change. Um, air flow seems pretty decent at 6300 Cfms.

Uh, calling for about 6,000 Cfms delivered. Capacity is about 160,000 BTUs and we're calling for about 162,000 BTUs I Mean this guy's on the money I'm going to look into that second stage a little bit more, but I'm a happy camper. This guy is doing everything it can I'm still going to rinse off the condenser here in a few minutes because the front was a little bit dirty and we do have a water hose up here, so we're going to do that in a few minutes. But let's go back and look at that second stage again and see what that one's looking like.

As far as our numbers go, sub cooling's a little bit on the low side. They don't really go off of sub cooling on these guys, but if you basically look at what the first and second St or first and third stage are doing, this sub cooling's a little bit low, indicating to me we might be a little bit undercharged. Possibly All right. We are back up and running, everything's put together, We're just going to rinse off the condenser real quick, which it's not really dirty enough I Think to affect too much on the operation.

Uh, but this unit's back up and running. They should be happy. This compressor was covered under warranty. um, through the manufacturer I Think that it was damaged because they weren't cleaning the condenser and the third stage, which is typically oh no.

the third stage is the bottom, so the bottom half of both sides. So actually, the second stage is the one that usually has the most problems because it's the hardest to clean up at the top, but that's pretty much it. Everything else on this unit's working. All the condenser fan motors are working, um, all as well.

So we're going to put this door back on. give this side a quick rinse and that's it. Going to give the customer the keys we got the new disconnect on everything is good for whatever reason. I Lost the first part.

like the first footage for this video. So we originally went out there and uh, had I actually had another technician out there. The technician was out there, he diagnosed the unit and uh, he was out there cleaning it and he noticed that the third stage compressor actually and the the first stage compressor were both making a really funny noise. Um, when they were running.

But he went ahead and cleaned up the unit and the first stage quieted down but the third stage was still making the noise. So the where my footage actually started? Uh, that for whatever reason I lost was me going out to double check the diagnosis of a failed compressor because it was under warranty. we wanted to make sure it was 100% And I went out there and the compressor ran. It runs fine, but what I noticed is that whenever the head pressure would get kind of high, the compress would start to bypass internally like a pressure relief was letting go.

but it wasn't even that high and you could hear like an audible high-pitch squealing sound like gas was bypassing in the top of the compressor. But it wasn't even that hot. So we condemned the third stage compressor because of that. Now it was still running, it just wasn't operating and pumping efficiently.

The compression ratio was all messed up and that's the footage that I lost. but you start saw when I came back. Now the other thing I noticed was that the unit also had a bad disconnect switch because when I was double-checking the diagnosis I started check checking voltages and I noticed that like one of the compressors had really weird voltage and then I traced it back to a failed disconnect switch. so I was able to get it running in the meantime and then I came back out and we changed the bad disconnect switch and the third stage compressor.

So that's where the video took off. Basically, and you saw that part. Um, you know when I'm going through these I Know it may seem repetitive. you know, recover the gas, change the compressor Purge with nitrogen.

You know, all that stuff. change the dryer. all that stuff. But I mean it's I Think it's important for people to realize that it almost needs to become a routine when you're doing that stuff.

You know it sucks having to bring my entire van on the roof, but it just it is what it is. That's how these jobs work, right? So you just go through obviously brazing with nitrogen as much as possible. Now I'm not going to pretend like I'm this perfect service technician that does that every single time. I Don't Okay, I try my best.

but there's times that I don't braze with nitrogen. but there's also times that it's almost impossible to braze with nitrogen. Are you working on a capillary tube system? Trust me. Try brazing with nitrogen on a cap tube system.

It's just a pain in the butt. Because of the pressure differential created by the cap tube, you can't really flow the nitrogen low enough to not create a pressure drop across that cap tube. It just becomes a problem. Pump down refrigeration systems can be kind of tricky to braze while having nitrogen flowing through the system, so it's not always practical that you're going to flow with nitrogen, but on a compressor change like this? Sure.

I'm going to now. as far as this compressor. I Think that the compressor was internally Dam damaged simply because the customer doesn't do routine maintenance. They constantly run really, really high head pressure.

It damages the internals of the compressor, messes up the oil in the compressor, and causes issues. Now, this one also had an electrical issue because that disconnect switch was starting to fail. uh, from a loose connection of which I temporarily tightened. but I still didn't trust the internals of that disconnect switch.

Surprisingly enough, the disconnect switch is what took the longest to get. but I didn't want to come back out and do this job until I had it. So that's why it was a 3-we time from when we I mentioned in the video that we were out here cleaning the condenser 3 weeks ago. It took me 3 weeks to get that disconnect switch cuz it was on back order for whatever reason.

but once we got it, we went back out. But again, you know it's just about trying my best, right? I Am absolutely not perfect. but I'm going to try my best to go through there and make sure that this system is operating as best as possible. Um, flowing with nitrogen, protecting our dryer and components with the heat blocking compounds or wet towels.

That kind of stuff right? Again, just try your best. So we went ahead, we got it back up and running and it honestly I think this was done back in August and we're now in November So everything's been working fine other than I'm pretty sure we had to go out and clean this unit again since then, but you know it is what it is. So I really really appreciate you making it to the end of the video. Thank you so very much for all the support! Uh, let me know with some feedback down in the comments, what you think and uh, if you haven't already, please consider subscribing to my website Hvacr videos.

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