This video is brought to you by Sporland. Quality Integrity and tradition. Currently getting ready to cut this compressor open. Had a couple technicians out to a location and this guy was pulling locked rotor amps.

Had three phase going to it and it wouldn't run. So I'm draining out the oil right now. So far the oil doesn't look too bad as far as quantity. Now the color of the oil is hideous.

That looks bad. This particular customer, um, isn't doing routine maintenance at the moment. It's kind of sad because this compressor is only from 2019. I actually made a video installing it.

It was like a late night beer walk-in service call. But um I'm gonna open it up. We're going to see what makes this guy tick and see if I can figure out why it went bad. I already have some ideas I'm not going to reveal them to you yet, but we'll see as we're cutting it open.

So initially I poured out as much oil as I can get out. There's still oil in it, but it's just difficult to get it out. I could let it drain through the little oil port but I don't have the patience for that so we're just going to cut it open. But so far I got just under one and a half liters.

This guy calls for 1.89 liters. Honestly, that's not too bad now. I Know there's going to be more too, but that I mean I don't think it's a lack of oil issue so we're going to keep cutting it and or get get cutting it and see if we can figure out what killed it all right? I Just got done cutting the top off and uh, let's pull this off. We'll have our initial look interesting I'd expect to see a little more overheating in here I'm not seeing that.

Definitely the metallic stuff on the top is probably from me cutting but I do see stuff down inside. We'll get a better look when we actually open it up. Um, it's dirty but so far nothing too crazy. So let's keep going all right.

So we got this thing pulled apart and oh I already see some damage in here. Looks like it wasn't well, as far as we know it wasn't grounded, but it looks like there's winding damage in here. From an overview, definitely let's get the camera up in here so you can see it. so look right here that's melted.

You can see the copper wire is broken so it completely opened it. That's interesting. Okay, well let's keep on pulling it apart. Yeah, these things are messy when you do this, so always make sure you got lots of towels in a place where it's not going to get ruined.

This table is my compressor cutting table so it's destined to be nasty. So I Just like to start by wiping everything down for the most part, get in the bulk of the oil out and then we'll uh, really analyze it. Once we kind of get the parts cleaned up. we definitely know there's a problem in the compressor windings in here, but I want to know if there's any damage inside the scroll plate assembly? I'm not seeing any right now.

For the most part it looks like the old ham coupling is still intact which I've seen those break off when you have like flood back issues and stuff. I Guess I Can tell you guys because there is no video for this one. What they actually found was that once they replaced the compressor, they found that this was on a rack. There was a blown fuse for the condenser fan motors for this section of the rack and there was a bad capacitor.

So because the customer's not doing routine maintenance, what we think happened is the thing was just turning on and off. on and off on high pressure and probably going off on thermal overload too. We just know we got there when the breaker was tripped. we turned it back on three phase out the motor.

we're at the windings but I don't remember if he said that. he had continuity. Obviously it looks like he didn't I think he had an open winding I was not there I was just hearing everything second hand on the phone. Dogs are driving me nuts right now.

Foreign. Have to get the big boy out. Yeah, those aren't budging. I'll have to get my big impact out.

of course there's always one. Okay, yep, just stripped out. All right. Let's go ahead and uh, test this guy for continuity.

I'm gonna go ahead and put it on tone. It reads continuity and tone. so we're going to tone out the windings, which we know there's nothing. looks like we got one.

Yeah, so we've got open windings is what it is. Now let's test to the case. I'm curious. Nothing.

Nothing. I'm surprised this thing wasn't shorted to ground. It literally opened instead of shorting the ground. So if we come over here again, right? here is what I'm looking at.

So it's where the wire goes into the overload because the overload's in here and it just melted. I'm curious. I'm going to cut open that overload I Want to know what it looks like inside? There was it just opening and closing a bunch of times? Probably would be my guess as far as the shape of everything else, nothing too bad in here. I See a little bit of galling the little round circles.

You can see them a little more pronounced than this one, but not bad. You can kind of see them right here on the back. Get to see a little bit of the galling. but I mean not not as bad as I'd expect it I Saw the tiniest bit of copper plating a minute ago, but I think it was on one of the bearing surfaces.

Like right here, just ever so slightly starting to plate and then in here just ever so slightly. But overall Refrigeration Wise, this guy didn't look bad. Look at the floating seal. looks nice and good.

This is so I mean I would consider to be a brand new compressor. Really bearing surface not too bad. Um, in here though, there's something interesting. It's really rough and there's a tiny bit of copper plating right here it.

I don't know if that comes across in the camera or not, but it's not very smooth anymore and it's kind of rough. So something was going on in here, but we know it had enough oil. I pulled out even more oil when I was draining it so a little bit went in that and then all together on this where it's actually not sitting level. we're just about one and a half liters like I said.

This called for like 1.89 liters. So I don't think it was an oil problem. Um, doesn't look like there was too much overheating going in here. maybe around the edges, but that just could be from where the weld was.

Um, so our problem was in here. So I'm going to go ahead and open this guy up and dig into that overload and have a look at what the overload looks like. Foreign. Well this guy I could already tell that this had broken off.

Okay, because that is sticking out this end and you can see a little piece of molten right there from the metal melting. But if you look in here, there's signs of the overload clicking on and off if you look at the points where these two meet, so that is one of the points and that goes click click click click. And yeah, this guy was clicking on and off on overload and for whatever reason, this terminal completely melted off. So that wire is right there.

That piece of copper was the wire that used to go to that terminal. so this literally went like that. So yeah, this guy died a premature death because they lost a condenser fan motor and it was jamming on and off on high pressure. and for whatever reason it took the customer a long time to call us.

This was their beer walk and by the time we got there was the next day and they called us I think at like 10 or 11 in the morning and we could clearly tell that the box was like 65 degrees. So it had been down since the previous day and they just didn't notice for some reason I Don't know why they didn't notice. but yeah, all right. So that is my analysis on this guy.

We had an open winding because the wire melted off at the overload right there. The compressor itself isn't in bad shape as far as the scroll set. I Mean, not not very bad on the copper plating. The tiniest bit of galling like right there.

You can see a little bit too that's just from flooded starts usually, especially for this little amount right here. Um, the crankcase heater was working on this guy, so that wasn't our problem. We didn't wash out the oil, it had plenty of oil in it, so that's it. Uh, you know.

I Saw minor minor copper plating just just starting to happen on the inside of here. a little bit on the inside of there tiniest orangish pinkish tent on there. but other than that, this compressor was in decent shape. So I attribute this to Cadets or fan motor failing and the customer just not having us doing routine maintenance to be able to catch something like that.

Now it's hard to say whether or not you know we would have caught this exact issue. but I I would like to think that we would have been able to catch a capacitor going bad. you know that kind of stuff. So all right.

Well, that's it on this one. We're gonna call it a wrap. I Encourage everybody out there. cut open your compressors.

if you can do it safely. you know the first one or two that you do. You're just gonna butcher. You're gonna destroy.

You're gonna cut things you don't want to see cut. I Mean it really doesn't matter unless you're you know, like, like me. I'm doing it for videos purposes and for my own education. but I like, things to be cut open to where they're not all damaged and ripped up.

I've got one sitting right up in here. it's a small scroll. Um, the small ones are really nice because that one's manageable. You know it's It's really easy to lift around and take apart.

The one that I cut up in here was was a little bit bigger I think it was a three horsepower I think or a two horsepower. so it's a little bit bigger, but still, it's manageable. But I encourage everybody out there to cut them open. you know Copeland actually recommends on their semi-hermetics Like if you're returning it for warranty like they don't mind if you take it apart, just put all the pieces back inside the the the shell and bolt it back together and you're good to go.

It doesn't have to be functioning, they just you know if they're even going to open it up. Sometimes they do. they open a certain percentage of them when they're returned for warranty. But I digress.

You want like I encourage you all to autopsy your failed Parts whether it be compressors Motors um controllers, expansion valves, valves, solenoid valves you know, Head pressure control valves I have learned so much that I otherwise wouldn't have learned. you know had I not cut them open right because like most of the the public out there you know I used to say man, head pressure control valves they fail all the time like they're just they're dumb right? But once you start cutting them open like a head pressure control valve and you realize there's nothing to them. The only thing that really makes the head pressure control valve go bad is contamination, right? Majority of the time compressors, they don't go bad on their own. they're murdered right? I didn't make that up.

someone else said that. but I mean it's a great phrase and it's a great way to think in this situation. For some more context, this customer has, um, high pressure safety controls right? So they have high pressure controls. It's actually a dual pressure control in their Auto reset.

Now a lot of people out there will say well if it was manual reset this wouldn't happen. That is true if the control was manual reset a good. You know it's very possible that this would not have happened. but what I will say is with manual reset pressure controls in the area that I'm in in the summertime, we would literally be going out for nuisance trips all the time.

When it hits 115 degrees outside, this equipment goes off on high head pressure. Okay and you know most of the time it'll reset and then it'll start back up. So if we had manual reset of course they would trip and they wouldn't turn back on until I go out and push the button. But we would be having a lot of nuisance trips just simply because for 404a, if you look at 115 degrees of the saturation temperature, it's literally right at the threshold of where this compressor can operate.

So you know these things are really operating just to the edge of their safe operating envelope and you know it's just inevitable that we're gonna have trips. So the nuisance trips would be ridiculous for us having to go out and just push buttons all the time. A couple Summers back, we literally had to do that even with the auto reset because we have them set for about 400 PSI 410 PSI somewhere in there. And uh, I mean sometimes you just can't help, right? You'll clean the condensers and then a week later they'll be slightly dirty and then they just trip on head pressure.

So it's just one of those games. Now, if we designed if from the beginning, if the customers designed the equipment to operate in those ambient conditions, then it would be better because they would be sizing condensers you know, ever so slightly oversized. so that way they lower the condensing temp. But you know when you get this equipment in these chain restaurants and it's just like a cookie cutter load calculation, they go okay.

Well, this Refrigeration rack can operate in these high conditions in these low conditions and then they send out the same pre-made Refrigeration rack to every location. Well, when you have one location because we have a lot of micro climates here in Southern California where we could literally be 30 miles the opposite direction and it only gets to 95 in the middle of the summer, we go 30 miles the other way and it could get 120 in the summer. So you have these weird micro climates and you know when you send out this cookie cutter equipment. uh, you know, sometimes you just run into these problems.

So my opinion this thing had, uh, the the failure point was the connection to the overload that got really really hot and it melted. Why? I mean I Can only assume that maybe it was just because that overload was because that's a clicks on overload right? So when that metal gets hot, it it pops up and then when it cools down, it contracts and falls back down right and then makes its connection and then it gets hot and it pops up and then it cools back down. So I think that was happening over and over and over again. and I think the connection point to the wire to the windings was the weak point and that melted and then opened and then caused the compressor to single phase right? because it's a three-phase compressor.

So they lost a leg, right? So when they lost a leg, um, it basically uh, was pulling locked rotor amps. So that's why my technician saw a locked rotor amps because it couldn't get rotating right because it didn't have all three legs to sit there and move the magnetic. The shift didn't happen to cause it to start spinning like it should have and it was just pulling locked Road ramps and tripping the breaker. So this was a cool one for me because I was not there to diagnose it right I did not change the compressor.

my technicians did. so it was really cool for me to be able to pull it apart. not I mean I had a general idea I knew the conclusion was that it had a bad condenser fan motor. but you know I didn't didn't change it.

so it was fun to be able to diagnose this. So I encourage everybody out there, tear your stuff apart. learn from it. Okay, because the more you learn, the better technician you're gonna be if you understand because I can start I'm starting to Envision these compressors in my head when I walk up to a scroll compressor I'm I'm hearing sounds and I'm like oh I bet you I know what happened there.

You know and like you can start to see things so tear things apart. you will learn so much more I know I have Okay I really appreciate you making it to the end of this video. Thank you so very much! It's really awesome. If you're interested in supporting the channel, the easiest way to do so is simply subscribe to the channel and watch the videos from beginning to end.

That's the easiest way to support it. Okay, a couple other ways. if you you want to support it financially, there's PayPal Patreon YouTube Channel memberships. There's links in the show notes of this video.

Okay. Also, we have an affiliate program set up through Truetech Tools if you go to Truetechtools.com If you're interested in purchasing any tools, use my offer Code Big Picture Okay, when you use my offer Code Big Picture, you get an eight percent discount on majority of the items on their website and I get a small commission from that. That's a great way to help support the channel. If you go to my website Hvacrvideos.com we have merchandise available on my website.

Great way to help support the channel, so check it out again! Thank you so very much. Remember to be kind to one another. You, you know you just never know what the other person's going through, right? It doesn't justify someone else being a jerk to you, but at the same time, just remember that guy. that woman, whoever, that whatever could be having the worst day of their life.

And maybe they just weren't being cool. They were rude to you or something like that. and you know, sometimes just letting whatever they did just kind of brush off your shoulders. You know, And just being kind to them can maybe make their day a better day.

So just remember that we have so much animosity. we have so much hate. We have so much just anger right now. and uh I mean even I'm guilty of it.

and in all honesty it just I don't know Life's Too Short It really is. It really is too short so just be kind to one another. I Really really appreciate you and we will catch you on the next one. Okay.