This video is brought to you by Sportlin. Quality, integrity and tradition. All right. Today We're going to be working on this Chirak Blue unit.

So this is a glycol cooler and what's Happening Here is this controller does not allow me to do anything. It won't respond at all. Uh, Chirak or Charleston no longer makes this. They have a retrofit kit that they've sent me.

It's going to retrofit that entire electrical box. This is the first time I've done one of these. So get ready for the ride. Let's get on with it.

Comes with a whole instruction sheet on how to do it step-by-step instructions. It doesn't look too too bad, just a lot of steps. Comes with a new module and then circuit board and it's supposed to be more or less Plug and Play Started by disconnecting power. This unit's already been converted to the new sensor style, so that saves me a step later.

down the line it says the disconnect. All These power connections back in here butcher up in here. Here's the glycol pump installations to be. He's a little bit messed up there, but all right, so that's that.

Um, you know what? we got to be careful because well I guess it's not gonna matter. but we this has been like converted and stuff. Pretty sure this pump's been replaced. on these units.

they use a glycol pump to circulate glycol. It's a secondary heat transfer fluid. Um, instead of running air across an evaporator coil with refrigerant in it, they have a flat plate heat exchanger in that insulated material right there and the refrigerant stays on one side and the glycol then runs through these tubes and is pumped through the cold Rail and through the base section. So there's no refrigerant where the food is at.

it's just food grade glycol. All right. We've got this all disconnected back here. the condenser since I'm back here I can see through it, so that's a good sign.

Now we're going to go back to the front and start. uh, doing some work out there. Moving through the steps, it says to remove the front display right here. we're going to unplug everything.

get everything disconnected from all of that, get the controller pulled out assuming we're going to mount the new one in there. it has Specific Instructions for removing the factory pressure control, but this one no longer has a factory pressure control so it's super easy. I Just cut the wires. Now we're going to get this box out which I got screws from the other side.

It's kind of a bummer though because the casters are all messed up. so moving this thing's kind of a nightmare. So there's a few steps that they tell you like. install the cable and mount this before you actually Mount the box.

That doesn't really make sense to me because I need to be able to move things around and the least amount of stuff in my space on this area. right here right now. the better. So I will Mount that here in a few minutes.

But right now my next step I Got everything disconnected is to get this whole module out of here. bunch of little uh Phillips head Tech screws. There's four of them to be exact and now it's loose so we can be able to pull everything through from the other side. Once we do that and this whole thing should pull out, the power cord will come out with it and then we'll connect it to the new one and feed it through.

All right now, the boxes are a little bit bigger, which kind of sucks I'm gonna be a little tight in there, but we'll get it going. Um, we're no longer going to use the Intellitrol relay module, the hybrid relay. it's all built into that, which a little concerning because now you're based off of a relay on a circuit board that you can't just change the relay. Having this guy right here was nice.

Still have one of these in my shop and one of these I just don't have the Intelli draw display I've kind of glanced through the instructions I got to pull the power switch out because we got to use the old one and stuff starts getting a little messy when you get to this step and some of the instructions are a little bit out of order and don't really make sense like they make sense. but I mean the order of what you're doing things is a little different. So I connected the pressure control a little early because I got to push this box back and then we're going to connect the solenoid valve and the condensing unit up in here right now. Then we're going to push the box back and use some tech screws to mount it to the back wall.

Then we'll connect. See like this is one of the first things they want you to connect and it's like now because that would be in my way right now to this display. So we'll do that last, but we're moving along. It's really not too bad.

It's pretty self-explanatory to be honest with you. They want me to run Tech screws from this way through the back and I need to pull the back out because it's a little sketchy drilling through without knowing what's over there. I mean I think I'm clear, but I'll pull it out, give it a look and then we'll start getting to the rest of it. So far, mounting this box is the hardest part and I don't like how it doesn't have support.

it's literally resting on the dryer. which sucks, but in all fairness I don't think that dryer was originally there, but it's kind of where you have to put it and it makes it difficult for when you have to change the dryer. but it's in so let's proceed all right so we're back here. Yeah, everything turned out good.

The hardest part about mounting that box was that these Molex plugs you had no way of knowing. You know, like they kept hitting this bottom metal panel. But I got it figured out. Okay I am going to run new sensors.

Yeah, they sent me new sensors. These ones might still be good, but I'm not going to take the chance. One thing I do like is in the instructions. They tell you which plug is the pump and which plug is the EVAP fan because I unplugged them and then I didn't pay attention.

So now I know the one going into the box is the bat fan so that one's easy and then the other one's the pump. There's not a very easy way to run new sensors because they're all encapsulated from the front in the box and they run through the walls to the back. You're not going to change them. They actually tell you if you have to change sensors that you retrofit them and locate them in the glycol, both the blue and the green sensor.

So what you saw here them running down into there is the factory recommended way for replacement sensors. so we're just going to run new ones down in there. What I typically do is take a zip tie, use it as kind of a straight guide, and then tape them to it and then you got to make sure though that it's got it. can't just go in the reservoir.

it has to go all the way down into the flow. So you got to get it all the way down there. So what I'll do is I'll mark it. Find out, mark it up here.

So that way when I know when I feed it down. When my Mark gets to this point you can cut. You have to feel it. It's not just shove it down and call it a day.

There's a 3 8 inch hole down at the bottom up here and you got to feed it down into the tee all the way into the flow. Kind of a pain, but once you've done it enough times, it's not too too difficult. All right. Again, this is not the easiest thing.

Got to make sure you put the cap on. This is my mark of how deep it needs to go and then I balled up the tape that way you can't pull the sensors out through the hole that's in the cap. If you silicone the cap, you want to be careful not to silicone it to where there's no breather anymore because there's actually a breather hole in here to relieve pressure. So now it's a fine process of feeding it down, trying to find the hole at the bottom, and making sure it feeds all the way down and this right here should come to the top of the bottle when I'm all done.

We got the sensors ran down inside sensor cables routed that way. Still an ugly mess. There's no cover. Cover's been missing for this for a long time, so we just have to clean the condenser.

But it's clean. so now everything gets done from the front side. the rest of it. Oh yeah, they got their oven running now and it's got some sort of a bearing issue or motor going that loud.

squeaking Sorry for the noise. All right. We got everything in here. We're using the yellow sensor.

We spliced it. That's what they say to do because you can't re-run the yellow sensor. The blue and the green are all plugged in. The advice I give you is just plug them in an order of color because it's hard to see back there.

So I did the green first, the blue, second, the yellow third, and other than that, this guy's ready to start up. This wiring in here is a bit messy. kind of silly, but I'm gonna put the cover on and then we're going to turn power on and hope it doesn't blow up. Plugged it in and one two three.

please don't blow up. Power's coming on Assuming that's normal startup. it's not flashing for me. it's just doing that for you guys condensing.

it's running because it's probably pumping down All right. I Need to go through the programming and see how this thing works and what happens here. All right? Well, I Talked to technical support at Chirac and they told me that that error message right there means that it does not have communication for some reason with the display or there's a potential problem with the cable. So they're telling me that, uh, you have to change the display and the cable.

Now they are saying that it will work, it'll factory set at 27.5 degrees and it'll operate. It's kind of a bummer. brand new and it won't work, but they are saying that you have to be very careful when you put this display in not to push in the center when you're snapping it in because you'll ruin the display which it says that in the instructions and I specifically push just on the outside edges. but there's nothing I can do about this.

I Tried reversing the cable too because they said sometimes that can be a problem. I Tried making sure that this cable has good communication. It does. They just basically said that I got to change the display and the cable.

so I'll go ahead and order those parts. Kind of a bummer, huh? All right. Well, I'm back and I'm done this because I'll let you guys hear the sound of this oven. Yeah, that's pretty hideous.

It got worse since the last time I was here. so it took a couple weeks but I got a new controller, everything swapped back over. We're gonna get ready to turn this guy back on and uh, hope nothing blows up and you can see we actually have a display now. So I don't know what happened with the old controller but this one's working now.

We're gonna watch this box come down to Temp Uh, it's been working ever since I left so we're gonna watch it for a few minutes. I Have been telling them over and over again. this is why these controllers fail. They put these sanitizer buckets right on the controller and when they Splash their hands in it soaks the controller.

I'm pretty familiar with these these Chirac coolers that's just the manufacturer of the region and they used to be from California they've since been bought out and merged with ITW Illinois Tool Works which owns Chirac and all these different companies Charleston Uh, do they own Hobart too? I Don't know, they own a bunch of different companies and I don't even know if they're ITW anymore. They might be someone different now. But anyways, when you call the Chirac number you talk to Charleston is who you talk to or you push an extension and talk to Chirac but it's all the same stuff. When that happened, they started implementing um, the Charleston controllers the intellicharl controllers because that's what was in here before and then the Intellitrol controller has been phased out and now they have this new one.

So we've been waiting for this for a couple months. this conversion kit and it was kind of a bummer to get the conversion kit and then to have it not work. You know it is what it is I guess at least it was just the display and the cooler itself still ran based on the circuit board so we just didn't have a human interface with it so it limped along until we can get back. I Actually found if you noticed If you go back towards the end of the video when I came back out, it was at 34 degrees.

That's a little high for this box and what? I actually found even though the manufacturer told me it was factory set to 27 degrees. No, it was factory set to 34 degrees. Surprising that the the they weren't complaining about the temperatures in the box. but regardless I got it set back down once I had the human interface where I could actually interact with it I got it set back down to 27 degrees like it's supposed to be set to and the unit's operating properly.

So for a quick rundown, this particular unit unit is a refrigeration unit that has a secondary fluid that uses glycol that pumps it throughout the box. So a lot of people ask why the heck go through the process? why not just use normal refrigerant? What they're doing is they're removing the refrigerant from the food safe area. Okay, another thing that I can tell you a hundred percent with these Chirac blue units, we no longer have as many refrigerant leak problems before. They were prone to evaporator failures because of the way they store the food in the box and it was just deteriorating them and then the refrigerant would leak out and it was a problem.

I Personally have not had a single evaporator failure or heat exchanger failure now when the glycols in the indoor coil. uh, personally. Okay, now that I say that I'll probably have a failure and you'll have a glycol rupture or something like that, but it would just be glycol, it wouldn't be refrigerant so it's easier that way. The other thing I notice about these boxes too is they take a long time to come down to temperature, but they perform like insanely well in really hot kitchens with the cold rail up top.

They can leave the top off of that thing and they don't have any problems with temperatures in their food all the way throughout. They have very good consistent temperatures with these glycol units or Chirac blue units as opposed to the old school Panchiller Motors that had refrigerated cold rails and air moving across it. This one doesn't have any air moving across it, it's just the cold glycol surrounding the pans. They they surprisingly do really well.

The crazy thing know is these boxes are 25 to 35 000. That was before the inflation stuff that happened so I could imagine they're even more expensive now. They're very, very expensive. Like insanely expensive and that's the customers.

Good pricing too. I'd probably have to pay a heck of a lot more for these things, but they work and they work good as long as the customer's not shortening them out now. I showed at the end of the clip that sanitizer bucket like those things are what kills these controllers like it's insane. And they're pretty expensive, so you know, who knows, we'll see what the customer wants to do.

But um, I've done a lot of the work on these things, so I already know the rundown. So putting this retrofit kit on there really wasn't a big deal I did tell them over the phone when I called them. Some of their steps are a little out of place. like I'm not going to mount the the display before I mount the relay module and the boxes and all that stuff.

That's just silly because I need that room in there. But I mean it's all good. For the most part, you know it's a pretty easy install. Two hours, two and a half hours at the most.

I mean and you know it's really not that difficult. so I really appreciate you making it to the end of the video. If you haven't already, please check out my website Hvacrvideos.com We have some merchandise some hats available on there. Um, also, if you're interested in supporting the channel, there's a really easy way to support this.

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Thank you so very much and we will catch you on the next one.