This video is brought to you by Sporland quality, integrity and tradition. I Swear I Work on this AC all the time. So the customers complaining that their kitchen AC is not working come over here. Condenser is dirty and severely damaged.

Um, it's not running I bet you anything it's off on high head pressure. So this is a York Predator unit. Your Predator units have their uh circuit board in here that has logic. So we open this up.

Come in here and count the flashes. four, three, four three. So four and three. And if you come over here, you got your flash codes right here.

four is high pressure and three is high pressure. So it's two high pressure codes. So um, we already know that the unit's got a dirty condenser. So let's go ahead and start by cleaning the condenser first and then we'll reset it and see if there's any other problems.

All right, it's always easier just to take the panels off. Okay, now on these. York Predators I've shown some videos where I get really frustrated they have a stupid screw like right here right in here I don't ever put those back in, just eliminate those and put all the rest of the screws in. That way you can fully get in here clean it from the inside out.

Now it's funny because I'm thinking as I'm driving up I'm like why is it that I always get calls at this restaurant on these two ACS this one and this one both their kitchens. Now granted they're always running right, but it's very rare that I get calling their dining room ACS And they have three more on the other side of the roof or two more. But it's because of the location. They've got exhaust fans right here, right? and it just this.

You know these things just get plugged up, which is crazy. So we're gonna clean this right and proper. Okay, and then we'll finish testing the unit. But my question is I'm asking you, why would a dirty condenser cause the unit to go off on high head pressure? Okay, think about it for a sec.

It would because your compressor pumps the refrigerant. That refrigerant is superheated. Or it's it's you know, high temperature, high pressure? superheated? Vapor right? Uh. Heat of? uh, compression? There's lots of things factors and then it circulates through the condenser in the outside.

ambient air is supposed to pull through the condenser and reject the heat. So we've already got extremely hot refrigerant right from the compressor and it just can't have the heat rejected. Basically, so you run a high head pressure condition and these units, the compressors can catastrophically fail if they have head pressure too high. I Mean there could be all kinds of problems.

You can have copper pipes rupture too. It'd have to get pretty, uh, hot and the pressure would have to get pretty high to rupture a copper pipe. But if it was weak or something, yeah, you'd have it. Okay, so in this situation, we have head pressure controls that lock the unit out and the unit was locked out.

When we got here. it was often high pressure for one, high pressure for number two. So it's possible it could just be a dirty condenser. It's also possible that it could be a bad fan motor now.

I Already turned the unit off. Okay, there's a quick. it spins freely. That doesn't necessarily mean it's good.

We'll spin this one. it's locked up, so it's not just gonna be a condenser dirty. It's going to be a bad fan motor too. so this fan motor doesn't spin freely.

We definitely need a new motor, so I'll start calling around. I Have someone else here with me. We're going to get this guy cleaned up and then once we get it cleaned up, we'll get the fan motor and we'll get it turned back on and we'll finish evaluating the unit. But as usual, big picture stuff, right? We're not just going to assume it's a condenser fan motor.

We're not just going to assume it's a dirty condenser. We're going to check the rest of the unit out. This particular customer does not do routine preventative maintenance. The belt is nice and tight.

blower motor moves so that's good. But they don't do routine maintenance so this stuff happens. Okay, if they did routine maintenance, maybe we could catch that motor making a noise before it completely failed. Maybe we could say hey, the condensers are dirty I'll be honest with you, the only reason why these condensers on these other units are clean is because whenever I have a hose up here I clean everything because I'm like this place is two hours away from my shop two and a half hours sometimes and I don't want to have to come back out here just to clean a condenser on another unit tomorrow.

So we're going to clean them today. All right now we are working with a micro Channel condenser because we're working with a micro Channel condenser. You have to use special cleaners. Okay, the yellow Venom pack is completely micro Channel safe.

It's not going to hurt anything. If you use the blue Venom pack, you can damage the micro Channel condenser so you want to be very, very careful about that. Okay, there's only so many cleaners out there that are safe on aluminum, which is what micro channel condensers are made out of. Okay, now this is the Viper yellow Venom pack from Refrigeration Technologies You also couple it with their gun and you'll get the proper concentrations.

Okay, now other manufacturers make a gun that works, but the Viper gun is actually specially formulated for their cleaners. Okay, and uh, you want to use this that way. you can get the full nine gallons because this is pure concentrate. You can get nine gallons of cleaner out of here.

Okay, so using their guns now. Next thing we're going to do is we're pre-wetting the condenser. We pre-wet the condenser, then we're going to apply cleaner. We're gonna let it sit for a little while and then rinse it off and then probably have to do a double because there's a little bit of grease on here the grease.

Because again, the exhaust fans are right here. Okay, so we're in the process of cleaning this guy and I'm about to make a phone call to see if I can get a condenser fan motor for this guy. So now this is the yellow again micro Channel safe. So the trick to this is to spray it on and let it sit for about five minutes or so.

It's not going to do anything, it's just a specially formulated mix of soaps and and it doesn't etch the coil or anything so you just want to let it sit build up both sides and then we'll give it a rinse. now. we could have done this through the coil cleaning doors, but they're super tiny and it's difficult, right? So you might as well just take the side panels off that way. it's nice and easy.

all right. Unfortunately, we can't get an Oem motor today and I need to get this AC going so we're gonna have to use the aftermarket. Um, super cool though. We talked about this before.

I Dig this bag. Uh, it's a giant tote bag the Ctxl look at I can fit everything in there I've got a condenser fan motor, a band saw, a blower capacitors. I Dig that thing. Makes my life easy I Picked it up from Truetechtools.com If you check out their website, use my offer code.

You can get an eight percent discount on most all items. almost all. there's a few exceptions, but check it out! So uh, got an aftermarket three-quarter horsepower 1075 RPM 208 volt motor. We'll put this guy in and we'll just have to make it work.

Got to maintain your equipment? Look at all this dirt. This is all just from this one condenser. We're like on our third rinse right now, but it's just coming out. It's crazy.

It's better. I Think we'll probably do a little bit more because it's still just a little bit up here in the top, but the condenser is pretty clean. It's interesting though because I can still feel a film of Grease like it's just rinsing that grease off takes forever and then also when it's really, really hot. I Know people have a hard time understanding this, but I've seen it happen so many times at this particular location when it's really hot and you turn this unit on if this condenser is saturated with water I have seen them go off on high head pressure so that's why I bring my air blower and I talk about blowing out the water because it gets trapped in there.

It's like, uh, something tension, whatever they call it. I don't know, but we'll get that rinsed or blown out just to make sure. And then I went ahead and took some penetrating oil I'll just use like a whatever from the supply house penetrating oil and sprayed it or dropped it on here. Let it sit.

We're gonna go ahead and start taking out the fan blade and then we'll work on getting the new motor in there. So with the penetrating oil, the blade came right off so that was really cool. now. um, something I Want to talk about normally when I change condenser fan motors I usually get a blade too.

In this case, we don't have a blade because I'm using an aftermarket motor, but this motor has got a super thick film of grease and stuff built up on it. Or the blade does and that's going to cause premature failure on the new motor. So we want to go ahead and clean this. We'll degrease it as best as possible, get this this grease off, and hopefully get that added weight and that'll actually reduce the RPMs um, or the Cfms that the blade is actually moving to when you have build up on it.

So we're going to clean that guy too. and then I'm just working on getting this motor out with uh, some penetrating oil. I Was very carefully able to get this rain Slinger off the old motor. Now this is an aftermarket motor so it has weep holes or drain plugs.

so there's two holes down here. Uh, This is Gonna Mount Just like this. So we got to make sure that the plugs are in the top. I Know it's kind of hard for you guys to see.

let me turn it there. There you go Gotta Make sure that the plugs. it's just a little tiny rubber plug. Make sure they're in the top and you want them out of the bottom.

The theory is is that if condensation was to build up in the motor, it can drip out the bottom, but we don't want it to just run in the top when it's raining. But we're also going to have this rain Slinger on there too. So we're just slowly assembling this and we're just about done cleaning the condenser because this is an Oem. or you know, the OEM motor was a three-wire motor.

So we're setting this up as a three wire even though I have two brown wires? What? those are for the capacitor? We put a connector on one of them and we taped it off and we're going to insulate that because the brown and white is the common technically. so we're pulling that off and we're only wiring to the brown. We'll put a new capacitor in the other side over there, but we're currently getting ready to tie this all up because we want it to be all nice and neat and look professional. So I just took the blower, blew out as much of the water as possible on that guy.

We're waiting for it to turn back on. Check this out though. This one's not even that bad. but look up like a giant smoke cloud going up, stuff coming out.

That's what the desert does to you. It's still dirty, all right. My unit is running. uh, my other guy's currently walking around cleaning all the other condensers, just rinsing them off, blowing them out.

So, uh, the unit isn't completely stabilized out yet. but it's getting there. Okay, so we still kind of have a wet condenser. You can see it reflected because my actual pressures are below the targets.

Okay, and again because there's still some evaporation happening with the water on that condenser. so it's dropping the temperatures. Okay, but overall, I'm not seeing anything too scary. Superheat is kind of ranging because the bond, you know the buildings under a load.

Um, it's a little low at the moment, but I've seen it kind of. It's kind of fluctuating. It'll settle out. Sub cooling about 15 degrees.

That's not too bad. We're reading discharge pressure, so yeah, not too bad. Scroll on over. um 107 degrees outside.

It said uh, temperature splits just about 18 degrees. That's not too bad. so let's go ahead and scroll on over. There's my 107 outside.

Let's go ahead and scroll on over to the second stage. second stage that condensers the wettest. So that's why our head pressure is so much below the target. Um, again, superheat about where it should be sub cooling.

A teeny bit on the high side, but I'm not too worried about it. We know the condenser is clean Again, we're just still. Even though I blew it out, there's still some water in there. It's kind of difficult on these guys, so I'm not seeing anything scary with these pressures after we change the condenser fan motor and uh, that's the other thing too.

While we were going through it, we noticed that the capacitor for the other motor was a little low. so we changed both capacitors. everything's running. The compressors are loud, but they're bristles, that's that's.

pretty typical, but you can see down in here even though I blew it out. watch all the water is still coming out of that thing still full of water so we got to kind of wait. You can see the the wet spot still kind of evaporating. This side's looking a lot better.

a lot cleaner, still really damaged, but it's moving. Um yeah, it's looking really good. So we're gonna watch this guy for a little bit longer and then uh, like I said, we're rinsing all the other ones too when I change the motor I have to cut out the factory plug. but I did it in a way that it's not ruined in case we ever go back to The OEM motor.

I'll put it in with the compressor just like that. We could splice it right here if need be and then you still have the factory connector. so I like to do that that way. Uh, you know if you want to make it I prefer it to be OEM but we'll just set this guy in here and so far this guy's doing great.

Just need to put the caps on and we're kind of in cleanup mode at this point. I apologize for my office. it's like Dexter's Laboratory in here I Got all kinds of experiments and projects going on and it's just like a dumpster fire on top of my desk with all kinds of paperwork and products and air monitors and all kinds of stuff. So anyways, this video like it showed in the beginning was actually filmed all the way back in July of 22.

So July of this year it is now uh December 14th of 2022. uh, this is just archive footage that I had. uh don't have a lot of new footage right now so I kind of rely on some older stuff that I have just sitting in my hard drive. so but this is a good one.

I don't like using aftermarket Motors on these ACS I Really don't but sometimes you have to do what you have to do. Okay, this location that I was working at was all the way out in the Coachella Valley of Southern California which is about an hour and a half away from my normal uh service area basically. and they do have a lot of supply houses out there, but nobody had this particular motor. This was also back in July when it was the heat of the summer and it was hard to get Motors at the same time too.

So I did have to go in with a aftermarket condenser fan motor, but I made sure that I installed it in a way that did make it difficult for anybody else. A couple things when doing the aftermarket: Motors I Never liked to have the reverse wires sticking out the top of the condenser fan. Great! Okay, in this case you couldn't do it on this one anyways. but oftentimes I'll see people do that.

When they hang the motors upside down, they'll pull the the wires out where you can reverse the rotation and then eventually they just go bad. Okay, but then at the same time I still wired it up for a three wire setup meaning that we didn't use that extra common wire that goes to the capacitor. we taped that off and isolated it and then still, uh, located the or installed the the replacement capacitors where they belong in the electrical cabinet instead of having them hanging on the motor where potentially they can get wet or it's difficult to test. Okay, so I went through that process.

The AC itself is just dying. It's on its last leg you saw It was about 107 degrees outside. so it was the middle of the summer and um, that AC just struggles and I joked in the beginning. but I I probably have to work on that AC four times every summer because the condensers always get dirty.

They pay me to drive out there. We clean all the condensers on the roof, which is kind of like doing a PM right, but it is what it is, right? So we got the equipment back up and running. There's really nothing too difficult about this call other than we're being as thorough as possible. Okay, there's some things that I didn't like and I'm gonna just kind of briefly cover it.

The sub cooling. Understand something? Okay, this particular unit has a pressure drop from the discharge line to the liquid line. It's pretty common on these ACS for them to have some sort of a pressure drop. Okay, um, it.

ha. I think the pressure drop I Typically see it is much higher on fixed orifice metering devices. but anyways, that's a whole other thing. but taking discharge pressure, you want to make sure that you understand that you're typically going to have higher than normal subcoin if you only have a discharge pressure port.

Okay, on this unit, it was dischar true discharge pressure and we were calculating sub cooling from that. So your 10 you're going to have just a little bit higher than normal sub cooling when you're doing that kind of stuff. and then also the unit wasn't completely stabilized out. but I wasn't suspecting that there was a refrigerant related issue on this unit.

I'm really the only person that works on this thing for the last couple years, so I don't suspect that anybody put any gas or anything. so as long as it's not running low Subcoin: I'm not too too worried about it. I mean there's always the possibility that you could have plugged up micro Channel orifices which I guess could lead to higher than normal sub cooling Maybe Yeah, I think so. um, but that's not the case Okay Um and like I said, this was filmed all the way back in July and everything's been fine ever since I think I might have even gone out on it once since July too I think I had a call in September on this one that I didn't film but it happens.

You know we go through these things. so I really, really appreciate you making it to the end of the video. Thank you so very much for all the support! Um, the easiest way to support this channel is just watch the videos. That's really the easiest way to interact with them.

Feedback if you like the video, give it a thumbs up. If you don't like it, give it a thumbs down. Leave me a comment. That's the best way to support the channel.

a couple other ways to support the channel. If you're interested in doing so, you can support it financially via: Paypal Patreon YouTube Channel Memberships: There's links in the show notes of this video. So for the show notes: a lot of you people watching this on a phone, it might be a little bit more difficult to see the show notes or maybe even on a TV It might be kind of difficult, but there is show notes that has links and valuable information. so I encourage you guys when you get an option opportunity to check out the show notes.

Oftentimes there'll be links and different things inside there. Okay, so there's all that information in the show Notes: Check it out if you're purchasing any tools. I Kind of mentioned it in the video I Have an affiliate program set up with Truetech Tools I Go to Truetechtools.com if you want to purchase anything from their website I Have an offer code. Big Picture One word: If you use that offer code on majority of the items on their website, you'll get an eight percent discount and then I get a small commission when you do that.

Um, yeah, and that's pretty much it. Okay I really, really appreciate you again. Thank you so very much you know I'm kind of slowing down a little bit as far as my posting of the videos, trying to take a little more time for myself and for my family. So I'm sure you guys will understand, but I'm trying to reduce the amount of time that I'm spending in this office just editing videos all the time.

And I'm trying to put a little bit more effort into the quality when available too. Okay, so thank you so very much I really do appreciate you Okay, because kind to one another. Happy holidays all right, and we will catch you on the next one. Okay,.

.