All right, i had another service technician here: uh, because we had a service call in this ac, not working and what we found when we came up um was. We saw that there was oil. We've done some work on this. We changed and evaporated around this not too long ago, but there was a bunch of oil right here.

We were out here doing a pm and we actually found that one of the acs wasn't working. We had to make a work order. So that's why we had a service call. We saw oil everywhere and we checked the system out it's completely flat on refrigerant, there's no gas in it.

We brought up some nitrogen and pressure tested the system and actually found that there's a cracked discharge line right here now. When you see cracked discharge lines, you need to start thinking, hey something's, going on what caused that discharge line to crack vibrations in the unit vibrations. In the compressor, those can all cause it. If you don't have vibration absorbers on the compressor now, vibration absorbers are just there to calm vibrations down.

If the compressor is shaking a vibration or absorber is not going to solve your problem, but regardless we start looking at everything and what we actually found was that without the compressor running we turned it on and the blower assembly was shaking pretty bad okay. So this is an older blower assembly and it's out of balance, we pulled it out the wheel's out of balance the whole thing's just cattywampus. So is the blower assembly the only problem or is there other damage? That's the question so we come over here and we notice that the housing that the blower assembly on has a giant crack right here: okay, not giant, it's tiny, so big picture stuff! You got ta look at everything, so we're gon na have to give this customer a quote now. This is a.

I believe this is a six ton yeah. This is a six ton r22 package unit in a perfect world. They replace it, but right now you can't get equipment right, we don't know so we're going to give the customer options we're going to let them make decisions, but we need to gather information, so models and serial numbers pictures of the unit overall condition of the rest Of the unit the motor seems, okay, it runs um, the bearings, don't sound bad, they don't sound the greatest. The pulley is definitely trash, so we're going to put a new motor pulley on it, we're going to quote a whole new blower assembly.

Now this particular unit carrier usually has a pre-built blower assembly for it, which is really cool, but you still got to measure the pulleys we're going to quote one of the quotes that we're going to give them we'll quote to replace the unit. But then we'll also quote to repair it. We're gon na have to uh braise this up right here. We're gon na attempt to braise that to kind of strengthen it up, it's small enough that if we couldn't braise it, we could use a uh, a metal plate or something like that and then um.

We will probably quote 407c on this one because it does have pve oil, which 407c is compatible with. So we'll probably quote that with the prices going up as high as they are right now of our 22, i'm probably gon na do that uh. We will remove this suction line, filter dryer. We installed this 129 21 because we changed the evaporator because it had a plugged up fixed orifice metering device and the oil was nasty.

I did an oil change on that compressor. I don't know if you guys remember this. One but regardless in a perfect world, they change this unit, but i don't know if they're going to do that, so we're just gathering everything we need. So that way we can give them a proper quote and then let them make decisions on where they want to go with this unit.

Okay, so big picture stuff here, don't just stop at the refrigerant leak start looking. Why is there a crack in the line? What caused the crack? We bumped the compressor. Now it's not ideal to run a compressor with no gas in it, but we just gave it a bump to make sure it wasn't like shaking to all heck or anything. No, it sounds clean sounds fine, uh yeah.

Everything is looking like this is a repairable unit, mind you. It has a brand new evaporator that we just put in a couple years ago or a year ago, so they've put some serious money already into this unit. Now again in a perfect world, they change it, but you know we'll leave that up to the customers. All right.

We are back today, we're not gon na fix the ac completely. What i'm gon na do is i'm gon na attempt to repair this crack. Okay, so there's a crack right here. It's tiny um and i need to know whether or not i can fix this before i go any further with the ac.

It's gon na be hard to see because i just condemned an ac because it was cracked all the way over all the way over and it was all because of a blower assembly. So what i'm going to do is i'm going to clean the surface. I got two things: i'm cleaning it with. I started with the drill with a little brush on it preliminary and then now i'm going to get my little die, grinder tool, dremel tool, whatever you want to call it and get in there really good and polish it, and then we're going to use a low Temperature brazing rod for metals to try to stop this all right.

Then what i'm going to do is take the tiniest drill bit and drill a hole right at the end of the crack to try to stop the crack from spreading. So i got right down to the end of the crack and i drilled a hole right there to try to prevent it from splintering out anymore and then now we're going to take that low temperature brazing rod and try to seal that up and then we'll. If that works, then we'll submit a quote to fix the leak, and you know, replace the blower assembly. Okay, we're going to apply a flux to the area that we're going to braise.

Put some on the bottom too. We're gon na wait for the flex to there. We go then we're gon na lay this guy on there there's more than enough there and then let's try to do the other side, we'll try not to burn down the building. All right.

It's cooling now we're just gon na. Let that sit for a minute, then we'll clean it up and have a look at it see if it took and what we need to do to uh make it permanent if it didn't take pretty sure. I did, though, all right i ended up having to redo it, because i wasn't in love with it uh. It is what it is.

It's i mean you can only do so much. I think it's gon na hold seems like i'm flexing it, it's not moving. I just tried to get a little bit better coverage on it um. So at this point, yeah we're gon na quote a blower assembly now and then redo that refrigerant uh fix the leak all that good stuff.

All right, we are back. We got all the approvals to do everything we're going to change. The blower assembly fix the leak change the refrigerant over to 407c, so uh yeah shouldn't be too too difficult, just uh time consuming essentially so first thing we're gon na do is go ahead and disassemble. The entire unit take the top off, make our life a lot easier.

Then we can uh start investigating everything. All right got some uh big blue soap bubbles - and here is our cracked discharge line right. There nice big bubble good to go so we'll definitely get in there repair that well, we're probably gon na pull out the suction line, filter dryer, because there's no need for that anymore. We should have cleaned up the system from that was not from a burnout from me.

I put that in because there was a burnout previous to when i did this store and when we changed the evaporator coil. I wanted to be 100 sure that you know we didn't still have anything floating around in the system, so um we'll pull that guy out change the liquid line, filter dryer and go from there, so the oil that's in this compressor is pve. I think it's polyvinyl ether, i think, or something like that, but anyways it's compatible with 407c. Originally i was going to change this oil just because it's been flat like it doesn't, have any gas in it, but i'm very reluctant to change it and the reason.

Why is because i've done it before and i in order to do so, i have to unsweat these stubs again, okay, so you got this stub and this stuff and the last time that i did this when i changed that evaporator coil, i had a difficult time. Welding them shut and what's happened is the copper coated steel. The copper is flaking off and it's getting more and more difficult. So, every time we embrace this, we run the risk of creating an issue where the silphos isn't going to seal it and then getting silver solder, like 56 percent to properly mix with silphos can be a challenge.

So with that being said, we are not going to change the oil in this compressor. We will take a shot in the dark and just give it like half a pump of oil to compensate potentially for what it might have lost, but i'm not going to try to unsweat that anymore. So we still are going to change this suction line, filter, dryer or at least replace it, and then we'll deal with the liquid line. Dryer and then uh, you know, pull a good evacuation.

It's not going to be perfect, but you know there's only so much. I can do i can't keep unsweating that compressor. What we ended up doing was putting a straight section of pipe right. There we're going to take out the suction filter, dryer all right.

We put a straight section of pipe right there because that's a really difficult spot to get to for the liquid line, filter dryer and we actually move the liquid line. Filter dryer over here now very important. When you are moving these dryers, you got to make sure that they're supported okay. So the last time i did a repair put a big old glob of silicone and this thing ain't going nowhere, but you need support because eventually it'll start pulling down on the condenser and cause a leak right there.

So we need to braise this guy up and uh all these guys up and this one right here where the leaks at so so so all right, braze joints are all done. We were flowing nitrogen the whole time, that's especially important, because we moved that liquid dryer. We want to make sure that we don't get anything that could potentially plug up that fixed orifice metering device again. So this was the most difficult weld.

It's not the prettiest thing in the world, but we got that one knocked out and now it's eliminated and the dryer's over here where it's easy for the next guy right, um yeah. That's it we're just gon na get ready to do a pressure test, make sure it passes a pressure test, we're currently still working on getting this new blower assembly into this unit, so see where i did that little patch job for the the broken line right there. We're just getting everything dialed in the old one didn't have a key, so we're putting a key in this one and yeah. Everything else is good unit, seems nice and stable, so yeah pressure test time.

I ran out of uh nitrogen, but i had enough to put about 129 psi in the system. So what we're going to do is go ahead and do a tightness test, and this is going to be a temperature compensated pressure test. So, usually, you want to give it a few minutes to stabilize out leave high and low open, close your process close everything else, make sure all these guys are on nice and good all right and then we're going to hit enter and it's going to start a Timer and it's compensating based off of the suction line temperature, now temperature compensated pressure tests are just one method: okay, this isn't going to be our definitive there's, no leaks. We're also going to pull an evacuation look for a good micron level: okay, um, it's always best.

If you have a big system that the entire system be brought to the same temperature, because if this evaporator is downstairs - and it's you know - 65 degrees down there well over time, you're gon na have deviations and that temperature clamp mounted up here is not necessarily gon Na see those right, so it's important that if you're gon na do a temperature compensated pressure test, take the top off the unit make sure it's been sitting out in the same ambient for a while and we're just going to let this thing go all right. 10 minutes temperature compensated. It hasn't changed anything okay, i'm going to clean this guy out now and we're going to run the evacuation. So i'm going to set up my vacuum rig and then then we're going to put a condenser coil cleaner on everything and try to wash out most of the old oil all right.

We got the field piece: vpx7 vacuum pump, 10 cfm way overkill for this okay, but the hoses are really what make the difference so we're pulling through the system. We've got the uh mg 44 micron gauge over there. It currently doesn't register any microns. I've got the gas ballast open on the vacuum pump; okay until we get it to about 1500 ish microns and then we'll close it.

So that way, it's kind of saving the oil um and i'm gon na start rinsing. This guy very carefully went ahead and closed. The gas ballast because and i closed the high side porch so we're just pulling through the suction. My micron gauge is currently at 400 microns, but we're gon na.

Let it keep running trying to dehydrate that oil. I went ahead and mixed up some of the the viper venom pack right. There just took a little bit and caught diluted it with water and sprayed it on here and just went ahead and got the condenser really quick too. This is my uh foam gun, so it does a good job.

The condenser is really not that bad, but you see it foams right up, but i'm just putting it on there just for a minute and then we're gon na keep uh trying to soak up some of this grease down here. One of the cool things is with the job link app i'm able to be over here and not because, like the micron gauge is a little difficult to see. So i can set it up and trend it and watch the evacuation rate and how it goes and everything, and then you can time it. You know all that good stuff, so we're going to let that keep running i've been slowly rinsing, doing a good job.

Getting a lot of that oil, you can see it kind of breaking down in there right there we're just kind of keep rinsing and keep putting a little bit more. Um people ask me all the time how come i don't comb the fins i actually do. I've got a fin cone, but the problem is is when these fins get old. If you comb them the next time, someone washes them, they bend again, but i've got time to kill anyways, so i'm gon na do it.

It always works best when the condenser is wet and it's never gon na be perfect. Okay, so find a clean spot work your way up, but again, like you know, it's not gon na be perfect. I always find it easier to pull up than go down so again, there's going to be spots, you're not going to be able to get and then just work your way across evenly but, like i said it always works best when it's wet it's a little bit Better, this spot is pretty difficult to get to because there's extensive damage right here, but you can clearly see these fins like they just come out because they're so worn out. That's the problem with them.

So it's a little bit better. It's not perfect! There's a little like this is deteriorating right here, pretty bad, but you know it'll allow for a little more airflow through here. I evacuate with them in the mid position that way it doesn't have as much air particles stuck behind it. Okay, so we went ahead and shut it off now, it's normal that we're going to see a rise.

Okay, uh we've got the graph to look at how it's going to rise. If we go back, we can see the evacuation's been running for about six minutes. It's about 392 microns and rising, and that is normal for it to rise. Okay, um! So to me, the way that that's rising is uh moisture, so we're gon na see where it tops out at notice that it's not a straight up.

Okay, if it was a straight up, i would i would think that would be a refrigerant leak, but it's kind of slowly rising and tapering off, so we're just going to let it sit and decay for a little while and see now. Also in the app you can go in here and you can hit stop and then you can hit start again and it'll start another time period. So we know that we were evacuating for six minutes and then now we can time our decay. So i think that's pretty cool how it does that in the app and it gives you the leak rate so we're just gon na.

Let this guy keep going and oh yeah see how it's tapering off and kind of coming back down pretty much just moisture. So we're gon na let this guy sit and see what happens. So this guy looks like it's doing fine now. That actually might have even just been me shutting the ball valve on the coil removal tool, because i was in the mid position, but maybe it still had some air in there behind the ball um i'm loving this evacuation in this decay.

I mean it's sitting there and we have the micron gauge away from the pump. That's one of the really important things is that the micro engage. I shut off the pump um, the micro engages all the way over there and we were just pulling towards the end at the suction line right there. So this is good.

You want the micro engage furthest away from the pump um yeah, so we're doing good. We're gon na go ahead and start assembling this guy and uh getting ready to uh charge it up really so we're currently waiting uh over here technician uh going to get another pulley, because this motor pulley is uh, pretty worn out the groove on it's pretty messed Up so we're gon na do that the driven pulley seems to be okay and we had to shim out the motor brackets, because the carrier - and these things always get wobbly all right. This guy was our 22 and it took nine pounds. So what we're going to do is we're gon na start with about eight pounds of refrigerant we're gon na weigh in eight pounds of 407c and then we're gon na charge via target superheat to dial in the charge after that, okay, so uh, the scale handle is Zeroed out, but i'm also tracking it over here on the joblink app right there: okay, so it tracks it right.

There we're gon na start with eight pounds. Let's open this guy up open this guy up adding refrigerant and then we can actually open this guy up too, so it may or may not take all the gas like this. We may have to turn it off and turn it back on and that's fine, but we're going to go ahead and put in what we can just through the high side and then once it won't take any more through the high side. We'll switch the gauge hose over to the low side and turn the system on most refrigerant manufacturers.

Tell you to stop at eighty percent of the factory charge and then dial it in from there and that's actually where we're at right now. So i'm gon na stop it so seven pounds, because nine pounds is what it should be. So we're going to stop at seven pounds and then we're going to uh dial the charge in uh via the low side. So now we need to finish assembling the unit and then get ready to start it up.

In the past, i've shown a trick where, when you want to change, cylinders or something like that, you can kind of trick the scale by by pushing down on it until you were at the weight. You don't have to do that when you're using the job link app. So if you come over here we're at seven pounds, 1.75 ounces and i hit the pause button and that allows me to go ahead and switch it over. And then i can hit the start.

Button so where this we might lose a little bit right there right and then we go here. Okay, so this you notice that it's a little it's it's, not horrible, but it's a little off right. So all that we have to do is come over here and just hit start or hit the pause button. Uh wait stabilize.

Would you like to continue so now we're back to the active? As we add refrigerant, it's going to change so cool little feature that the job link app has. We just got all the panels put on the unit. The wiring in this thing is horrendous, but there's not it's polishing a turret over here. It is what it is.

Um it has a aftermarket cfm which it works, so i'm going to leave it alone for now, but eventually we'll get to change it and put it all back to factory spec, put a spoiling catch-all filter, dryer, oversized 16 cubic inch and it's nice and secured. So it's not going to break anything so we're going to put the panel on now last thing: this building is just opened a few minutes ago. So when we turn this on, we have to go downstairs and make sure it doesn't blow dust all over their food. So i'm going to send someone down there turn it on we'll talk on the phone and i'll regulate the dust via the disconnect switch.

All right. My system is running. We have a target superheat right here of 12 degrees based off the indoor and outdoor conditions, so we're just adding refrigerant, slowly paying attention to everything and watching that target superheat, so we're charging until our actual superheat gets close to that target. Superheat again, assuming your air flow is correct too.

This guy is pretty much where it needs to be target. Super eats about 10.7 we're right at about 10 degrees. We've got a 39 degree, saturation temperature 105 degree. Condensing temperature sub cooling is a little bit on the high side, but everything else is really kind of falling in line.

We do have a pressure differential from the discharge to the liquid line port um, our evaporator temperature split is 23 degrees that seems relatively decent um. So we're just going to let this guy run for a little bit and uh monitor everything. Okay, um one thing i will say i do appreciate that uh field piece changed their app, they uh they kind of updated it, and in fact i can tell you guys too that they're working on some other updates too, because i did bring some things up to Them that i think, would make it even more efficient and they've confirmed with me that they're working on those. So i'm not going to say what those are yet, because it's going to take them some time to get them dialed in.

But if you guys have feedback for field piece reach out to them, let them know you know, let them know. What's going on um other things that they did was they actually have an invoicing system built in? So i don't have any invoices created in here, but you have the ability to go in and basically fill out a whole customer database. Do your total invoice amount you can upload. You know, i mean they really did a good job.

Uh. You know updating everything. Would you like to save your changes? No, and you can actually see invoices that are authorized, invoices that are declined, um pretty cool. You can also do a live look.

So if you have another team member somewhere else with the app they can uh, you know pull up their data and you can pull it up on your phone. Maybe one of these days i'll set that up, but i think that's pretty cool uh. They got their field piece university stuff in here phone numbers, videos pretty neat little setup here you can add customers. That's me! So i like it.

I think they're doing a good job, they're innovating for sure um. So we're going to uh watch this for a little bit longer, let's see so, it looks like our superheat's kind of moving around again. That's why we're watching it for a while. I want to make sure that it doesn't get to be too low, so we'll just keep monitoring it to make sure that everything's good to go.

I think this is about as good as we're gon na get it's at about it's kind of fluctuating, so they might be opening and closing the doors in the building or something. But we were kind of stably running around nine degrees of uh evaporator superheat, so we're gon na go ahead and take off the probes. Okay - and this is, i really do dig being able to use the probes, because you can have everything tucked in here. You have you know your air probes and everything over here.

It's kind of nice right um, then what we're going to do is we're actually going to add about a half a pump of oil to this compressor because we don't know what it lost. So we're going to kind of take a guess and just put about a half a pump in there again, i'm you know, there's not much. I can do because i'm afraid to dump it out again uh as far as brazing it closed again seems like a pain but um yeah. It looks like we're again it's kind of moving around 6.6 sub cooling and it's a little bit on the high side.

But i think we're okay, so yeah we're going to leave it at that and i'm going to mark it in several different places on the compressor and everything with 407c. All right. So we've got our oil right here, but we've got to purge this of anything okay. So we don't want any air or anything in there.

So what i'm going to do is slow, slowly start pumping getting all the air out there. We go now we're getting there. There we go. Okay, then, what we're going to do is slowly put our manifold hose right.

There we're going to open it to the system. Okay, it's kind of messy and we're hooked in on the suction side in here, so we're going directly into the compressor on the suction side and we're slowly going to pump oil into it just slowly. We have to overcome the system pressure and it should be going into the crankcase. That's it i'm going to stop at one we're not going to put any more in there we're making an educated guess that that's going to be enough to compensate for what lost when we broke the discharge lane now in a perfect world, we, you know, weigh out The oil that's the perfect way, but there's no way to get it out because we've already unsweated and i'm afraid of ruining the compressor joints again.

So that's it! I'm going to have to clean my my oil pump out um and go from there, but normally you'd want to put a scale, and you know figure out the exact amount, but you can't always be perfect, so so in a perfect world, this customer should have changed This package unit, but wait till you see the next repair that i'm going to do for this exact location. It triples what i did to this one: it's nuts okay, but this is the sign of the times. We can't get equipment right now or the wait times for the equipment. Six months, a year 18 months, two years, it's nuts right now the backlog.

So a lot of the the pack major equipment manufacturers, they have national accounts and they give national accounts priority and uh. It's kind of nuts right now, even for national accounts. The wait time on some of these package units is almost two years. Uh 18 months, i think, was the longest that i'd heard.

So it's just crazy, but anyways hey it's good for me because they want to repair everything. So in this situation this was my um, my first video converting to 407c. It's not a big deal so long as you're using the right oil. No big deal at all.

Okay, you lose the tiniest bit of capacity, but it's negligible. You know um, but in this one you know i really wanted to change the oil in the compressor. But again, like i mentioned in the video i had already on sweat that several times and i didn't want to risk not being able to braise it shut again, especially because i've been using 15 softs the entire time and then the last time that i did it. It was really difficult to get it to hold and yeah, so i just didn't we, we took a gamble, but it held a good vacuum.

The pressure test passed everything was good right and um. It is, you know, amazing. The way that you know we were able to get this going right because you know having those low temperature solders for brazing the the the galvanized steel. That's holding that unit together right, that's really cool to be able to do that, and you know it's an absolute must when you're converting these systems over to these new refrigerants - and you know even on the new high efficient units like it's an absolute must that you Have um, you know digital tools, so that way you can really really see what's going on within the system, especially when you start getting into micro, channel coils and you're, trying to charge a micro channel, coil and you're not able to weigh the charge in.

You really need digital, because you need to get super accurate right and uh it. It's it's awesome. So, and it's just you know you have to. I understand that there's a place for analog tools, and you know we should all learn, but the digital makes it so much easier being able.

You know the micro engage, wasn't in the perfect spot, but being able to use the job link app and have it. You know my tablet over in the shade um, you know being able to see the trending data um when you're you're doing a decay test right. That's all very, very beneficial um, so it's really cool to be able to have that stuff and because i remember the time when we didn't have that stuff right and i was hesitant to get on board with it. But now i'm all in.

I love using the digital stuff and it's really cool so um we got the system back up and running. I mean it's as good as it's going to get that condenser boy that condenser has seen better days. I tried brushing it or combing it again and man. You know that every time you comb those things they get more and more weak to the point that when you go to wash it doing, a pm service you'll end up bending all the fins because they're just so weak.

You know it's just it's just getting old. Those copper aluminum condensers only last for so long, especially when they want those aluminum fins. You know to be you know straight up and down it's just it's hard to make them perfect, so we just need to take uh, better care when we're maintaining our equipment. Understanding that you know stuff has to last a long time right, um, i i'm still kind of dumbfounded.

You know even on this small unit, that they did this big repair, because it was quite expensive. On top of that, we just put in a new evaporator earlier in the year or last year or something so it's just nuts, how much money they put into this unit. But hey, i do what i'm told i give the customer options. I tried to convince them to change this unit and, along with another unit, like i said on, that same roof, it's kind of crazy and i just got all the parts for the other unit.

So wait for that video because that's going to be a big one kind of crazy, but so you know it's it's just about following a step-by-step procedure, making sure you understand what you're doing you know being prepared for the worst. That's a really big one. When you're doing jobs like this right be ready for the unexpected now, luckily i had another service technician with me, so when i realized that i needed a new pulley or i needed this or i needed that, i was able to send him to go. Get that stuff, so i could stay working, but it's so important too that even if i was the person to go get the parts, the person that stayed on site needs to be efficient, doing everything they can, while they're waiting for the parts.

To finish up. You know that so it's awesome to be able to film these videos - and you know, share these experiences with you all and i'm super appreciative of all the support that you guys give the feedback. If you guys do, have feedback criticism, praise whatever it is. I accept it all.

I learn from criticism. I really do appreciate it when it's positive right, i don't need someone just being a jerk but feel free to send me an email, hvacr videos, gmail.com, leave a comment down in the youtube comments. Give me a message on facebook, i'm on all the social media platforms at hvacr videos, um yeah. I really appreciate you guys.

Remember, there's a lot of craziness going on right now! Um, you know remember that you don't understand what the other person is going through. So keep that in mind. I say this all the time it doesn't justify anybody being a jerk, but just remember man, someone could just be having a bad day and just try not to take things so seriously. Um try to take a chill pill.

I say this because i'm the person that needs to hear these words the most because i have anger issues and i have to calm myself down, and so i figure i'd spread. The message too, you know just be kind to one another. Okay, i really appreciate you all and uh. We will catch you on the next one: okay,.

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