This video is brought to you by Sportlin. Quality Integrity and tradition. Today we're here RAC That's not working properly now. This unit is in really bad shape.

You can see the condenser has some severe deterioration. Rub my fingers across it and it just flakes off. So there's not a lot of Hope for this unit, but we got to do something to get it running properly. So let's jump into it.

Opening up the electrical section. uh, looks like it was started up on the 2012 so this is an older unit. What you can't see right here is that this is saying Alarm 22 Compressor 1 Low pressure S87 so it's off on low pressure. So let's go ahead and get some gauges on this guy and see if that's accurate.

All right. Um, we have zero PSI in the first stage. So what I'm gonna do I Brought up some nitrogen. We're gonna get some nitrogen.

We're gonna go ahead and shut the unit down and we're going to dump some nitrogen in this guy and see where this potential refrigerant leak is. I am a little suspect of this area. There's like what looks to be maybe an oil discoloration around this area right here. so we might have a condenser leak as possible.

So let's open this guy up and uh, well, let's get some Nitro in first and see what we can find. All right I've got about 82 PSI in the system equalized out I Took my little air blower and kind of blew most of the sediment away and so now what we're going to do is take some of the big blue soap bubbles and uh, get a steady stream and just kind of blow it in this area. I Suspect that we're going to have a leak somewhere over here. Uh, this is without a leak detector.

I'm just testing. if I can't find something here, then we'll put a leak detector or a little bit of 410 in the system and then pressurize it with nitrogen and then, uh, you know, move a little bit further. but I just suspect because I can tell there's like an oil stain down here that more than likely and it looks like maybe it's right there. But I'm gonna let it sit for a minute to see if that's the only leak.

Definitely a good one though right there. Let's let it sit for a minute to see if anything else pops up. Oh see, there's a second one over there. so this whole thing is just deteriorated.

I Have a feeling that when I heat this up, it's just going to cause other leaks too because of how bad this copper is this coil. we are near the coast. they should have had a coil coating on it and they never did. so that's a problem.

so we're gonna let it sit for a minute and then Mark all the refrigerant leaks that we see and uh, if that's all that we find, then we'll get in here and braise those up. Not really over here, but I'm seeing two leaks over here. We have one right there, one right there, and then one up here right in that corner popping up right there. And that's the power of the big blue and see how it sees the little micro leak.

So that's a tiny little one. So when you're brazing up this stuff, it's all about the prep. So I cleaned everything in the general vicinity. Now the two that are leaking are right here and right here.

I've been using water. that's why it's bubbling at me. so I cleaned it up as best as I can. We're probably gonna lay some solder on a good majority of everything in there just to be safe because everything in here is pitted.

Really really bad. Foreign. So I do have nitrogen flowing through there, but look at that. Of course it opens up holes because it's just so thin.

That's why I'm putting solder on everything because there's just holes in everything so hopefully I can get that patched. That's going to be fun. Thank you! Foreign. Foreign.

All right. You can see that it was so thin that no matter what I was doing, the copper was just opening up left and right. That's why I sanded everything because I had a hunch that's how it was going to be and one of the leaks actually got worse as I was sanding it. so I knew it was going to be really thin copper.

so it looks extremely ugly. But you know if I can get this to seal and be doing a little bit better than it was, you know? Oh nope, look at, look at, we still got a leak right there I can see it right. where's it at right there? there's one. So I still got to patch that up.

but it's just so dangerous in here because it just gets so thin just disintegrate. So I'm going to patch up that last one real quick. So we're going back in with a spoiling catch-all 16 cubic inch. so it's a 16-3 sweat that should work now.

I Got some of the Viper wet rag. the heat blocking Compound on the dryer okay, works really good. It's just a heat blocking putty that has fibers and moisture in it just trying to help dissipate some of the heat. Being that we're by the coast, the least amount of burning of the dryer paint that I can do the better because it'll make the equipment last a little bit longer just because we get a lot of rust because of the salt and corrosion we have here.

So we're gonna get this guy sweat in real quick. All right, got a little excess solder down in here, but it's okay I don't care so we're gonna get let it cool for a second. I'm gonna cool this off and then we're gonna do a pressure test on this guy and see if these guys will hold all right. Cleaned it off Dryer's good.

You see a little Bend I did to make that fit in there. That's cool. We'll figure out a way to support it here in a little while. but I mean it's just basically time to do a pressure test.

We got goobers and goobers of solder down here. so I've had nitrogen flowing the whole time. so now what I'm going to do is just close off my uh my um valve right here that I took the pressure port off and we're just going to pressurize this guy out. Well it's hard to say so far.

nothing super obvious. We're going to get some soap bubbles on this guy. It's still pressurizing so it doesn't have much pressure in it yet. See what are we at? 40 PSI I'm just dumping into the low side for now, but 40 PSI on the high side.

So we're gonna let it ride and get up to about 100 PSI some soap bubbles on it and then go from there I Went ahead and sprayed big blue all over it. so far nothing. So we're gonna let it sit though for a little bit longer and then we'll bump the pressure up even higher. I Just didn't want to waste a bunch of nitrogen if it had a leak.

so let it sit for a minute. then we'll bump the pressure up higher. Got it just below design pressure of 236 I got it right at about 200 and I'm not seeing anything all through there. No micro leaks, no leaks.

Um I think we're okay I mean of course I Know the system is going to run at a higher pressure, but this customer is going to have to replace this equipment too. obviously. look at the coil, it's completely disintegrated so it's not going to give them too much longer. but maybe we could make it another month or two.

get through the summer. I'm going to let it sit a little bit longer while I'm getting my vacuum pump and stuff ready. It held the pressure test at about 190 PSI for I don't know 20 minutes while I was getting everything ready. So I went ahead and put the vacuum pump on it.

We're just doing a two hose pull. Got the gas ballast currently open right now. so once we get the micron gauge down below about 1500 1000 microns, then we'll go ahead and shut the gas ballast. Um I'm gonna probably start cleaning up a bit.

get ready to get some lunch and let this thing pull an evacuation. Well shoot. I Left the vacuum pump running, went and did lunch and I came back and we lost our vacuum. What the heck is going on here? I Got two Micron gauges on this guy.

this one's still climbing. I Just shut them off right now. So what the heck am I I guess I'm gonna have to put some more uh, nitrogen this thing again and see something blew out, something popped somewhere. That was really weird I didn't catch it on camera but when I put my manifold gauge on there, it said the system was at a thousand microns.

but the Micron gauges individually were saying like 15 000 each and then one of them went to atmospheric pressure or high pressure. So I went ahead and blasted it with 223 PSI of nitrogen. We're going to let it do a pressure test real quick one more time. Maybe there's like trapped oil somewhere I don't see anything over here I pulled this cover off.

Nothing's standing out at me. so huh? Interesting. That's interesting. all right.

Well, that was frustrating. One thing I noticed is the vacuum pump has too much oil in it. It's almost like it sucked oil out of the system. I have seen that happen in weird instances.

Um, but it's it's way past the matte spill line. The next thing is I just went ahead and put Micron gauges on here and they're pulling down. Uh, I should be pulling a little bit lower than that though. but I mean they're pulling down I'm gonna go ahead and try to do an oil change on this guy.

Um, this guy has been running for six minutes and we've gained 0.4 PSI This thing doesn't have a leak. There's just I wonder because we are by the coast I wonder if we just have really contaminated oil in that compressor? Yeah, there's not a leak in this. So huh? this is being a pain, huh? Yeah. I Did an oil change and we got a significant drop in levels pretty quickly.

So I think we should put this back on the system again. I'm not seeing a refrigerant leak, we're going into positive pressure. We've changed in 10 minutes. So okay.

well, we're gonna Purge this nitrogen from the system and get the vacuum pump hooked up one more time and see if we can drop it down again. I don't know what happened with the vacuum when I went to lunch I don't know if something came loose or what, but it was weird because when I took the equipment off and put my gauges on, it said a thousand microns. So like this almost went. it went to high pressure so that's weird.

But um, the blue Vac app went ahead and gave me a pass on the Decay test. It said that we passed it. So I'm gonna go ahead and take this off and get this guy charged up. You can see that it's actually slowly dropping 594.

it's kind of bouncing around so I'm pretty comfortable that we're going to let the filter dryer take over the rest of the the system cleaning here and you can see too! I've actually got two Micron gauges, one on the high, one on the low and we're pretty accurate with both of them. So I Feel comfortable with this All right. I Pulled an evacuation on my manifold. Okay, our total system charge is 13 pounds.

eight ounces for the first stage. I Know I don't have that in that tank, but we're going to get out where we can. We're leaving the micro engages on there. they were at a thousand or something like that last time I checked.

but um, we're leaving them on there because uh uh, they can take positive pressure and we don't want to break the vacuum. So I evacuated on these hoses purged up to here and then now I'm going to dump the gas in here. We're zeroed out on the scale. Let me hit Tear one more time.

there. There we go. All right. we're zeroed out.

So we're just going to open the high side, start dumping gas in, and then it's just weighing it as we're going in. So we're going to put in as much as we can out of this tank and then I'll go get another drum out of my van when I need more. So about five pounds is all that it would take. Pressures are pretty much equalized out I Closed off the gauges, we're ready to turn it on and then finish charging the system via the low side.

Once this guy actually turns on, it's already calling for cooling so it should turn on pretty quick. Hopefully the compressor is good after all this. right there we go. we're running.

so I'm just going to go ahead and charge it on the low side, dumping as much gas as I can and then like I said, we'll go get the other stuff from the van when I'm ready, right? we're calling for 13 pounds, eight ounces. that's what I got in it. Systems looking pretty darn good. What I'm going to do is I'm going to start cleaning up my messes and uh, letting it run for a little while and then I'll put probes on it and evaluate the entire system with the probes and everything.

but uh, looking good so far. All right. First stage looking pretty darn good. Let's scroll on over.

it's about 88 degrees outside looking good on there. Let's go to Second Stage There we go. Second stage: I mean it's a little outside the envelope as far as uh, pressures go, approach temperatures a little bit High I wonder why I wonder if we're getting a bad reading for the air temp? Wait a minute. the sun's not right because we've only got a 1.3 degree temps.

but I think I got some probes mixed up. That's probably why everything's jacked up. Let's go over here. let's go to Probe Manager and let's look at our air probes.

Outdoor Airs: 87 Return Air 74 Supplier 72. Yeah I got a supplier temp issue I Need to move a probe. All right. So our temp splits coming up: I moved the outside air probe and I move the return probe and the supply probe.

So something that happens on these units. we're still a little outside our targets, which is a little odd. As far as temp split, we're calling for about 17.2 degrees. we're running about 17, so that's pretty good.

Um, let's go back. Let's look at. subcoin and superheat are about where they need to be. The approach temperature still a little bit off.

Um, and I'll explain that in a minute here. I Think that it's just because of the damaged condenser. really? And we're mixing a little bit of outside air. Um, because of the outside air damper.

So I had to kind of move the air probe around. It's not going to be perfect on this unit. They really need to replace this guy, but for now, this thing's doing everything that it can. It's much better than it was delivered.

Capacity is about 86 000. BTUs That's expected because normalized targets 86 000. Oh no, we're delivering about 82. Okay, I got you.

Um, but yeah, this thing's doing everything that it can. This unit is beat down. This inside condenser is trashed. the whole thing.

The whole thing is completely disintegrated. It's not getting very good airflow. You can't really clean it too well because it's just going to wash the coil off. Same thing with the outside.

The outside. is pretty bad too, you see. But again, it's much better than it was, so that's it. They need to replace this unit right here.

and they need to replace this unit. Made a video on this one the other day so both of those units are trashed, but they're a million times better than they were. I've got a mess to finish cleaning up. All is well.

we're gonna wrap it up. Give the customer the keys, give them a five day warranty. about. That's it.

I mean I'm not guaranteeing anything that condenser is trashed, but yeah, that's pretty much it. Everything else seems to be okay. Don't really see any issues in here. Uh, don't see any signs that there's issues with the contactors I Don't see that white powdery stuff popping out of there.

Doesn't mean that they're perfect, but everything else seems to be good on this guy. So like I said, we're going to give the customer the keys and tell them to keep an eye on it even though this equipment is just completely trashed. I did what I could to get it operational. So just from experience I know that you know once I started brazing on that one or the two leaks that I I knew that it was going to open other stuff and I knew that there was going to be holes opened up just because of how thin that copper was.

It was severely deteriorated, so that's why I just went ahead and sanded everything. just sanded that whole area down in there and just laid solder on everything. just heated it up so and for everybody asking to I'm using a zero tip. So a super small tip on there and I realized that you know my torch was a little bit hot but I tend to run it hot because I like to get in there fast and knock it out.

Yeah you do get some more potential of holes opening up and stuff, but you know clearly it was fine. We got it all patched up and everything as best as possible. It looks ugly, but it's functional right? But I mean not equipment I Really realistically don't think it's going to last another year like it's just done. They need to replace it.

but I did my best. even though I know that this is junk equipment I still did my best job pulling the evacuation, making sure everything was good, doing a pressure test, following through, and just giving it the thorough big picture. Okay always making sure that I'm doing that I try my best I am not a perfect technician in any way. Trust me, you know there's there's so much that I wish I could do better, but you know I try and I just try to do my best.

Basically, all right, that's all you can do, obviously following proper practices, making sure that you know you're braising with nitrogen flowing through the system as much as possible now. I'm not going to stand on a high horse and say that I do that all the time, but I Try Okay, I try my best. this case I was flowing with nitrogen just to try to prevent any uh, that carbon buildup on the inside and stuff because that'll plug up dryers, plug up Txvs which just cause issues and wreak havoc on the system. So we got them back up and running.

the AC is working. Uh, I did mention that there was another video I actually didn't release that one yet, but that one will be coming soon too. where I was working on an even older AC Um, a lot of that equipment there is just beat down. They actually have one two three ACS now that need to be replaced so hopefully we can get to that.

Uh, this fall slash winner. Get some equipment ordered. We're having a really hard time getting Linux equipment right now. Uh, I've been able to get carrier equipment lately.

Um, well. I've got one unit coming right now and then I'm waiting on another one. I was able I'm able to get York equipment but Linux is just we're struggling right now. But you know, hey, they're just a high demand because it's good equipment, you know? But anyways, I really appreciate you making it to the end.

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