I'm dumbfounded right now, the stuff that you find out in the field. First off this thing is covered in cork tape. I hate cork tape, it's a bane of my existence, but does anybody see anything wrong with that picture right there, maybe, like the txv sensing bulb, is on the outlet of the txb. That's not going to work that way.

This morning we are starting on a reaching cooler they're complaining that the cold rail up top is not working. So when i got here, what i found is that um, this switch right here, which controls the cold rail, is shut off. If i open this up, this is ice, cold and they're saying the bottom is working flawlessly. So i doubt that it's just a switch, but i turn that on condensing it's not running, and now it's starting.

So the next thing we're going to do is go ahead and put on service gauges on this guy and then see what's going on with the pressures, i'm very familiar with how these units work and um there's like a hissing noise coming up here, you can hear The expansion about feeding and it almost sounds like it's low on charge. It sounds like it's feeding, vapor like there's vapor going to the valve. I don't know we'll see i could be going crazy, but um. I'm just kind of sliding this condensing unit out right now and what was strange was the condensed unit just shut off.

Now i don't have ser there goes it just shut off again. I do not have service gauges on this guy, so we're gon na put the gauges on and figure out what's going on, but it sounds like a short cycling on low pressure at the moment, all right, i've got the field piece, job link, probes on and um We're looking at the joblink app and we are definitely shutting off on low pressure, so 20 psi on the suction line and dropping and the low pressure controls cutting it out. So what we need to figure out is: is the system still calling? Is the solenoid the solenoid valves open feels like it at least we'll check it we'll check to see if the solenoid valve is calling, because that solenoid valve is controlled by this control right here and if it's getting voltage, then the only thing in between here is A power head for the expansion of and we could have a power head failure. What i'm curious about, though, is how the unit operates with just the bottom running, so we're going to go ahead and open up the drawer and turn it on um.

I mean i wouldn't think that it's that low on charge, because the bottom's cold, but we still want to see the bottom turn on. So i open that up. So i can warm up we'll open these drawers, so it can all warm up and then we'll get the bottom to start calling and then see if it still runs with the bottom on in a screwdriver. What you can do, sometimes, is just put it right on there and you can actually feel that solenoid coil is calling there's a it's magnetic and i can feel the buzzing of the valve.

So the valve is calling, but i haven't checked voltage yet, but it's there. You can feel it it's not shut, so either we have a bad power head or something else is going on here, but likely it's going to be a power heading. I'm dumbfounded right now, the stuff that you find out in the field. First off this thing is covered in cork tape.

I hate cork tape, it's a bait in my existence, but does anybody see anything wrong with that picture right there, maybe, like the txv sensing bulb, is on the outlet of the txb. That's not gon na work. That way, what i don't understand is the previous technician that worked at this place. It wasn't me it wasn't my company, but what are they? Thinking like they took the sensing bulb off of the outlet of the cold rail all the way back there, but then they didn't think when they put the scentsy bulb on the outlet of the txv like hey.

This isn't where i took it off. What are you thinking here? The incompetence these days is ridiculous and uh. I turned off the top section, turned on just the bottom and got it to turn on and we are running extremely low pressure, so this guy actually looks like it's low on charge. It's not short cycling with just the bottom running, but i think it's that weird in between so we've got refrigerant leaks somewhere uh that txv, i don't like it, the sensing bulb.

I don't like it, but i don't think that is our problem. I believe we're completely low on charge, so we're going to pull the food out of this guy and then get in there. It only has one evaporative coil, we're gon na leak, search that these units are kind of a pain to come out, but you got to take all kinds of stuff apart and your hands are going to smell, like prep table funk for the next week. Unless you wear gloves - or i'm too lazy to go, get gloves so i'm kind of stuck with the smell but pull these guys out.

The the construction of these boxes makes it almost impossible to get back in here and clear clean, because if you let them take all the screws out and stuff, this thing would never go back together right, it's dinner time. Look at that looks nice and yummy looks like we got some extra stuff going on in that dream. Pan man, sometimes these boxes are amazing, uh how i'm impressed they actually got a spatula to stick to the top of the box. That's very impressive! Someone got some brownie points for that man.

I wonder what that is. Is that mayonnaise garlic aioli? So i love using the joblink probes, but one of the downsides to the joblink probes, with not using a traditional manifold, is that i want to equalize out my pressures right because my low side has has pressure because of solenoid valves. It's sitting at 20 psi and because the solenoid valves are closed, it's not equalizing out right. If i had a manifold gauge that i could just open the high and low side valves and it would equalize but there's another way, we can do this, there's a reason why i keep access fittings on both so i'll just put a hose between the two.

Let the pressures equalize out, then, while i'm doing that i'll take that cover off and then we'll do a leak search on the system. So this is my charging hose that goes in my smart probe bag for my job link, probes, um. When i put it on that side, i leave it cracked, so it's slightly hissy now, so that way, we're constantly purging and we're not introducing any air into the system. Let me just screw it onto here and then our pressures will be all right.

Now we're equalizing out, you can see we're at 71.72. I have the power switch shut off, so the compressor is not going to turn on and then i'm going to work on getting that cover off and then we'll do a leak search on that evaporator all right. So leak detectors over here it was already picking something up a second ago. Let's see we got yeah it's already getting in there.

I really like that lighted tip because it really tells you a lot get in here, make sure oh yeah, look at that. This thing's just going crazy. Now i have it on turbo mode, so we can adjust the sensitivity down to just low right and then we can really get in here and it's even picking it up on low, but that lighted tip on this leak. Detector really makes all the difference.

I really dig that oh yeah, that coil is done now, there's nothing on that coil that i'm going to try to fix if it has leaks, they're getting a whole new coil. No, if sands or busts about it. It's too much of a pain in the plant um. So what i'll do is i'll put the coil back together, um, i'm not even going to try to get in there with soap bubbles, because it really doesn't matter to me.

That thing is done just judging by the look of it and then we'll quote a new evaporator coil complete assembly, not just the coil, but the complete assembly with fan motors, we'll quote um, we'll fix that sensing bulb actually i'll, probably fix that right now, i'll top Off the charge and we'll get a new dryer on this guy and you always got to pay attention to the condensate heater. It actually doesn't look bad, but i'm going to check that hot gas condensate heater too, because those do have a tendency to leak all right. I'm going to get ready to start it up um, but what we need to do is when we are putting our hose on there. We need to leave the ball valve crack just a little bit, so we're purging right because that's connected to that right there.

So we close it off now, we've ensured we introduced no air or non-condensables into the system. Again, it's all about taking the time to do it right to prevent headaches. I actually forgot. I still needed to mount that sensing bolt back there.

So now i've got it mounted on the outlet. I still need to secure it with one more strap, but i got one in there and then we're gon na get some foam tape wrapped around it nice and tight. So you can't always assume, because something is where it is that that's the right place. We still got to put our thinking, caps on and think think think, right, um, but uh yeah.

So now i'll put my hose back on and get ready to start it up. Once i get it insulated all right, so we need an ambient temperature. It's about 65, our uh condensing temp over ambience, going to be about 25 to 30 degrees over ambient, so 65, 75, 85. 95 degree.

Condensing temp is what we're aiming for we're just going to add a little refrigerant slowly and see if we can get this guy to run properly um. I am using a rule of thumb to charge this unit because we're not going to weigh in the charge when we have a known refrigerant leak right, we're not going to recover the charge and then start over i'm just using a rule of thumb to get us Going temporarily and then we're going to warn the customer, but we're right about we're a little bit over, but we should be fine we're going to let the unit operate, then we'll turn on the top make sure the top operates. Fine and uh go from there. Another thing i should clarify too, is that i was using.

I was letting the system run and i was charging it with just the bottom calling not the top, because the top has a static, evaporator. There's no fan motors. It's going to lower the td of the system, the evaporator td, which is going to affect the way that you charge it. So, whenever you're charging these units that have static cold rails, i find it easiest to charge with just the bottom running and so and then give it some time, because um it'll really affect your refrigerant pressure.

So i always do it with just the bottom running. I just turned on the top just to make sure we're gon na watch the top frost up and make sure it works right, um and while i'm doing that, i'm just kind of looking around looking to see. If there's anything else, i need to consider replacing not seeing anything. Sometimes these temperature controllers will have water damage on the top.

I don't see that everything else is looking pretty darn good right now. This thing's running it's taking a while it's going to take a while to come down to temp, but it's starting to get a little cold and frosty in the cold rail. So that's a good sign. You can see the frost up in the top.

It should be pretty even all the way across that little white strip right. There is the frost, refrigerant pressures. I have the bottom turned off, because the bottom was satisfied, but the bottom is currently at 40 degrees, but i just turned the control off now. It's just the top.

That's running, looking pretty good, i'm not seeing any issues. So at this point, what i'm going to do is go ahead and give them a quote for a dryer, evaporator, coil and uh yeah. That's pretty much it i'll! Give this a little brush real, quick and get it pushed back together and uh give them the keys. We are back today we're going to go ahead and replace this evaporative coil that was approved so we're getting the drawers pulled apart.

There's no uh, no spatulas stuck to the top on this one and uh we're gon na open this guy up uh got the recover machine right here. We're gon na get that all ready and running real quick. Currently getting the coil disconnected and opened up. The drawers are all out, got the recovery machine hooked up um.

We had left the unit running while we were taking the drawers out so yeah. The refrigerant pressures were pretty equalized. They were running not that it really matters, because we're gon na be pulling from both sides. Anyways um, we're all set up.

The first thing we're gon na do is i leave this loose right here and then we're gon na go ahead and open this and open this. That way we can purge to right here there we go we're purged, we're not going to reuse the refrigerant, but we're still treating it as if we are this tank is nowhere near being full, but normally you'd put a scale under it uh. But this thing only has a pound or two pounds of gas, or something like that, so i'm gon na go ahead and open up both sides on the s-man manifold. Here i love the large display.

This is the s-man 480 v large opening everything's ready, uh everything's hooked up open to here. So we're just going to hit start on the mr45 recovery machine and it's got the slow ramp up there. We go so we're going to let it go and pull down. It's not going to take long at all and then we'll get in here and start changing everything out now.

The recovery machine has the auto shut off auto shut off at negative 10.. If you hit start again, it'll run longer into a vacuum to satisfy epa requirements, but this system also has a refrigerant leak in that evaporator coil. So if we run it too much longer, it's just going to be pulling air, not that i'm going to reuse the refrigerant, but still we don't want to mix it unnecessarily. So at this point we're going to go ahead and turn it to the self purge, and it's going to try to get out as much of the refrigerant out of the machine as it can.

It will auto shut off again and then we'll be done with the recovery we just ducked out. The coil disassembled should not be a hard replacement at all. The old coil pulled out that the lines cut long, we'll figure out the electrical in a minute. We're swaged right here: i didn't really want to unsweat on the txv, so swage these two will cut the other ones to fit and just working our way through it all right.

We're assembling the coil in there um right here we're getting ready. I got the s-man manifold right here. We are going to pull our evacuation through the manifold. I've got my large diameter, 3 8 hose run to the vacuum pump.

Now, of course, it's not ideal. I've got the gas ballast open. It's got the slow ramp up on the vpx7. This pump is way overkill, but it's just what i carry in my truck.

This is the lightest pump that field piece has, so it works great and i have it when i need it, but for something like this, i'm only pulling it like one cfm at that, because i left the schraders in we're pulling through hoses and pulling through a Manifold, so those schraders are a massive restriction in the system, but at the same time understand on a system. This small, with quarter inch lines and stuff you've got a natural restriction in the system. So yes, the schrader's taking them out will make it go faster. But it's also difficult on little guys like this.

So for now this manifold is going to be perfect. I'm pulling the initial pull down, i'm going to go ahead and open up the vacuum port right now there we go and then we'll open up the high and the low side you can hear it start to pull into a vacuum now. This does have a built-in micron gauge in the s-man manifold, so we're gon na. Let this run for a bit make sure everything's, nice and tight once we get a deep uh deep enough vacuum.

I'll shut the gas ballast, but i'm going to look for like 1500 microns, a thousand microns and then that's when i'll shut it now at 800, microns now understanding that it's not a true 800 microns since we're using the manifolds micron gauge. This is getting more of a pull than the actual system, so we're probably in the 1500 micron range inside the system, but we're going to go ahead and close. The gas, ballast and uh go ahead and let this guy just continue to pull down with the gas ballast closed. Now you can tell when the gas ballast is open and closed because of the led light in there.

So the gas ballast is open. Now the gas ballast is closed and it's controlled via this little paddle right here. So now we're just going to let this thing run for a bit we're assembling the box uh we had it went ahead and put on a spoiling catch-all dryer. I love these little guys.

The 0-32 cap-t dryer quarter-inch quartz, and it already has a process stub on the dryer and it comes with a schrader. So i dig those o32 cap tees use those a lot um coils there we're just assembling it again and yeah. That's where we're going a tip is um if you can and understanding how the system works, energize the system, so all the solenoid valves open up in this situation. Um we've got the coil in we energized it.

So we can see the evaporative fan motors working to make sure we did our job right and then back here. There's no uh refrigerant left in the system and we do have a low pressure control back there. So the compressor is not going to turn on. So we energized it all.

The solenoid valves are now on and open, and the evacuation is just a little bit easier that way, because they've got flow both ways so again we're just letting this run for a bit all right, um. I just uh shut it off a few minutes ago. We're in a decay right now it's slowly rising, but i don't see any problems. We pulled it down to about 600 microns.

It wasn't gon na get too much better than that, but uh yeah. This thing seems fine. So the thing to understand since we're pulling through schraders and stuff, you know when we close this right here right. This is our vacuum port.

We leave these ones open so that we can still see it rise, because inevitably it is going to rise. That happens. So you just got to let it sit for a while. You know best practices is to have a micron gauge furthest away from the pump, but in this situation since we're pulling through the manifold that kind of is what it is so um, i'm pretty comfortable with that vacuum rate.

So we're gon na get the scale out and get ready to charge. This guy got this guy purged uh. We've got it connected to the manifold right there, so we need to zero it out because we've already purged it all the way to here. Okay, so we zero it out all right and we're looking for two pounds: 32 ounces.

So we're gon na go ahead and open this process port and we will lose our micron reading. That's normal, okay and then we'll go ahead and open up the well. We got ta, shut the system off and then open up the high side, we're putting as much gas into the high side as we can again we're looking for two pounds, we're just going to let it dump into the high side and then once it stops taking It on the high side we'll turn the system on and charge it in on the low side, all right, we are able to put one pound of gas in through the high side again with the system off. Now i closed my process, i mean my high and my low process is still open.

We're going to go ahead and turn the system on the top is going to turn on. Uh solenoid valve is going to open it's going to take a minute because we have digital controls and stuff. So once it starts up, it's opening right. It's getting ready to turn on it's waiting for the low pressure control to see enough pressure.

That way, it turns it on so i'll. Tell you when it turns on should be around 55.. Oh, maybe not 55.. This is a pump down circuit um, so uh we're gon na.

Add it on the low side and we're just watching it we're looking for two pounds: we're just adding refrigerant slowly on the low side. Now, yes, we do have this opened and stuff we're just doing this just to get it charged and then we're gon na. Do a leak search and then we'll close. All this up all right got the field piece, dr 82, in here looking at our braze joints.

Luckily, we can get right to them to make sure there's no leaks, nope all right and then we're gon na come right on over here leak check the dryer, our two brace joints on the dryer. Nothing - and we would know - because you have the lighted tip on this one and the display so yeah - we're good, no leaks, we're going to finish putting this guy together and watch it come down to 10.. This guy is running it's coming down in temperature. It's going to take a little while um, it's about 60 degrees in this kitchen right now, so it's pretty cool we're just pushing everything back.

We've got the drawers back together, uh, that's pretty much! It we're gon na! Take our gauges off and uh wrap this one up. You know it can be just a reach and cooler call and you you still can be surprised, just working on a reach and cooler. You think it's the easiest thing, it's just a reach and how hard can it be? But you know like this: is the stuff you run into you have to learn how to deconstruct what other people have done. Try to make sense of what they're trying to do with that.

Txv sensing bulb like what was that person thinking honestly. I genuinely think it was pure laziness and ignorance, but because they unstrapped that sensing bull more than likely someone changed a power head like because the power head more than likely had failed and they changed just the power head, but ins and they unstrapped it from the Outlet of the cold rail and strapped it to the outlet of the txv, so that took effort on their part like they uns, took the straps off of the outlet of the cold rail and added the straps to the outlet of the txv like they had to Think right or maybe they didn't - i don't know i i'm dumbfounded on the stuff that i come across, but other than that i mean this is just a basic repair. You have to know your limits, you know. Of course i want to pull a perfect vacuum.

All the time - and of course i want to you, know, um weigh the charge in every single time, but you come up to a system that has a leak, and it's like this thing has like a pound of gas, i'm not going to recover the charge. I couldn't fix it that day and they needed it, so i was going to top it off. So i just used some rules of thumbs, got it to about 30 degrees. Uh.

The condensing temp was 30 degrees over ambient ish, and you know that got me in the ballpark and got it running until i went back and made the permanent repair changing the evaporative coil filter dryer. Then i vacuumed the system down and weighed in the charge. Okay, so it's always best practice to try to weigh it in, but sometimes you you got to do what you got to do right to get it operational same thing. You know call the vacuum police on me, whatever i don't always use my fancy, big blue hoses and all that stuff.

I try to as much as possible, but you also have to be practical, and i know that all the times that i've pulled those giant hoses out on these tiny systems, it just causes headaches. There's too many connections too many places too many tight angles, and i pretty much utilize those for walk and repair and air conditioning repair when i'm working on tiny regions, i don't always use those big hoses and i'll usually use my manifold gauge set. You just have to understand what's happening if you're using your manifold gauge set understand the limitations. Understand that if you leave the schraders in there's going to be a massive restriction and it's going to take a lot longer to pull the evacuation understand that the micron gauge in the manifold gauge set is not ideal in a perfect world.

It's installed at the furthest. Point away from the evacuation that you are getting a true reading in the system, so, but you know as technicians, sometimes we have to you know deal with. You know obstacles and sometimes we have to make things work and it is what it is right. You know we do our best and that's that's all that we can do right.

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