This video is brought to you by sportlin quality, integrity and tradition, so we got a beer walk-in that is at like 60 degrees and we have a bad compressor. We had a tech here diagnosing it yesterday, but i'm kind of curious as to why the fans are running at low speed right now and they should be running at high speed, i'm intrigued by that one. So these have two speed fans and when they get a call for cooling, they should speed up. That's interesting, oh yeah.

They should be speeding up, but it's also possible that the condensing unit power comes down here and energizes. The thermostat so we'll see we'll jump on the roof, so this is our unit. It's an old crack condensing unit and we diagnosed it with a bad compressor yesterday. So we're going to confirm, diagnosis and then proceed to change it if need be, and the compressor is locked up it just hums and doesn't want to start turn it off.

So yeah we're locked up the compressor's, not even hot. Let's check to see if we still have continuity, so we had it shut off all night, there's something funky going on there. I think the overload's like partially tripped. Now it was fine a minute ago, yeah, it's weird, but all right.

We're gon na go ahead and proceed with changing this guy. They put an isolation valve on the discharge line and then, of course, you've got your receiver, but there's no isolation valve on the suction line, and i mean so there's really no point i might as well. Just recover the entire charge because trying to isolate the discharge line in the receiver, you're, hoping that the refrigerant's in there, but there's still going to be a crap ton down in the evaporator so yeah. This is one of those things we're just going to recover the whole charge.

There's no point here: okay, so this is a cross reference uh. They don't make this compressor anymore, so the supply house crossed it for me, but i just confirmed using the copeland mobile app that this is the right compressor and it is. It is correct. It's going to be a little different, we're going to have to make some stuff work, but we're going to get uh get going on the recovery.

First, all right: we're purged all the way up to there scales zeroed out we're gon na start recovering this guy's open, yep, we're running it's gon na take a little while we'll start sanding everything up. So i sanded up what i thought i needed to unsweat we're gon na get rid of that suction dryer put a new one in um dryer over here sight, glass is kind of foggy, so we'll probably replace that. I think i have one we're just kind of waiting for the charge we're at about 15 pounds right now still got a little bit more to go, keeping an eye on that outlet pressure. We don't want it to trip the high pressure control.

I believe it's going to trip around 400 or so, but we're giving it time. That's where the big hoses really come into play in a perfect world. We go ahead and put that in ice too, if we needed to if it was a really hot day, but so this is a low budget special. They don't want to spend any more money than they have to we're, literally just putting in a compressor gon na reuse, the existing refrigerant just re-pipe, what we have to uh.

They don't want any big picture stuff here, and they know that they have refrigerant leaks down. In the evaporator coil, so um we're gon na have to keep that in mind when we're doing our evacuation for sure all right, we got all the gas recovered. I got some nitrogen flowing through this guy right now on the purge setting or brace setting, so we're gon na unsweat the compressor get this all out and then we'll figure out what we got to do to make the new compressor fit in here before we put The new compressor in we'll probably go ahead and sweat in the dryer, since it's tucked back there in a hard to get place, yeah, that's it! So all right, we got everything pulled out, need to undo this guy right here and uh we'll go from there. This guy looks like it's a little crimped down at the bottom, but we'll probably end up re-piping a lot of that anyways.

So forgive me i don't remember who, but i'm i'm re-piping this and uh we're going to put the dryer on this way. So that way, it's easy to change we're going to go with a flare dryer, but i was talking about how much i like the flare dryers. I use the sporelin catch-all and all right and i like how big the sight glasses are and the mechanical fittings are awesome, but very important. You got to make sure that copper gaskets in there.

If that copper gasket's not in there, it's never going to seal right. So someone had pointed that out that i forgot to mention that and sometimes when i'm working you know i do stuff and i don't even think about just common sense stuff to me. But you know it may not be so common to someone else, but yeah that copper gasket needs to be in that dryer in that sight, glass for it to seal properly. So we're going to clean this guy up put a little bit of nylog on it.

Tighten it up and then kind of prep it and get an idea where it's gon na go all right. I got a little re-pipe going on with the dryer going back that way, it's out of the way of the compressor um, i'm gon na braise. In those swage points i already tightened up the flare nuts yeah we're moving along. All right got the new compressor and it's really not going to be that big of a deal.

I believe this is 5 8 right here. That's going to sweat right into that, so we'll get rid of all that crap and then this will be a process port and i am going to have to use some 7 8 to kind of go up and go down, but other than that pretty easy. So um, when i removed this piece, where is it at that piece right there? It had a service port on it, so i have to solve the problem of. I need a service port for the suction side right.

So what i'm going to actually do is use a roto lock valve. So if you guys don't already know you can get these adapters for the rotor, lock valves that you can sweat to it's a roto, lock, adapter they're kind of a pain to find. But when you do find them, i always stock up on them and i always try to keep one of these valves and one of these rotolog adapters in my van now. You need a gasket in here too, but we'll get that here in a little bit.

So the roto-lock valve is going to go something like this like about right here, we're going to have a space between here and then this way now you would be able to isolate the compressor if you ever had to change it again, because you've got this valve Right here, a service, port and you'll have this valve right here, and this service port will be connected to this side, so you can isolate just the compressor when i'm done with it. Now you know yeah. This is an r22 unit who knows how much more life they're gon na get out of it, but the other thing too, i think i found why the compressor failed and i'll investigate some more but those fans. Whenever i turn on the solenoid, whenever i turn on power, the evaporator fans do not speed up to high speed, so i think there's either a relay or something wrong in one of the motors.

That's not starting them all up into high speed, so we're gon na have to look into that, but that could be why the compressor failed. I also want to try to pour out and see if there's any oil left in that, so i'm hoping we didn't lose all the oil, because that is mineral um and this is polyester, and i don't want all that mineral oil if it is lost in the System to make its way back, i mean there's not really a whole lot. I could do about it, but like a glove, i ended up having to swage it just put the swage bit on here. Real quick and went to town so that'll be perfect, we'll sweat that to that guy and then my guys should be back in just a minute with the suction line that i needed all right.

I braised all this going down. Okay, now i'm gon na pull this off tape it up and slide some insulation over it seal that up, pull it back, we'll braise this guy on and then we'll do the installation all over the rest. Okay, we got two dissimilar metals brass to copper. I put flux on it.

I put my small tip and we're gon na use 56 silver solder. I'm gon na go ahead and do it on both sides. So we'll go ahead and do this one first, because uh it'll heat up and make the other one flow easier. That looks good looks like it could just uh heat up a little bit right here looks good, looks good, okay, so that's good a little unconventional! Now i did both of them, because i didn't want the 56 to float down here and mess up that joint.

So that's why i just did them both, even though this one only needed it on one side. So, let's cool this guy off blow it out with nitrogen and then we'll uh, try to finish everything up, um all right! We're in i'm just cooling off the valve still got nitrogen flowing through it and then we'll uh get. The evacuation started put a little bit of nylog on the teflon o-ring a little bit of nylon on the nut and then we're going to tighten that guy on and then yeah we're ready to pull the evacuation. So we didn't really measure it.

But the oil looks like dirt, but um there's a lot of oil in this compressor. So i'm not it's not out of oil. So i'm confident on that. So that's a good sign so we're pouring the oil back in but look at all the metal shavings in this.

It's all full of metal shavings, so there's some kind of internal damage for sure. So i'm waiting for the evacuation and uh. This might not be a problem because it looks like they use temperature sensors on both sides of the expansion valve, and there is no temperature difference right now, so i wouldn't expect it to run so there may not be a problem with these fan motors. We're going to attempt to repair this all in here, that's all oil, and it's dripping off that line, so we're going to lay a braise on it and hope that that fixes the leak, because it's not holding the vacuum very well.

All right, i put a big fat goober on there, so hopefully that does something that was the spot. That was all oily. It's only uh. You know you can only do so much on these things.

All right, i pulled a halfway. Decent vacuum still not perfect, but what i did was i front seated the receiver's king valve and we're dumping all the refrigerant that we recovered into the receiver and then i'll release it from the receiver when i'm ready so we're just putting all the gas we can In there it's dusty all right, so it's working compressor's pumping we're gon na go ahead and add the remaining gas in there now all right. It took the whole charge, everything that was in the drum. So what i did now is i front seated the king valve on the receiver.

I'm waiting for the system to pump down we're going to test the low pressure, control, uh and the fans did speed up by the way too. I had a tech go down there once they had a temperature differential across that expansion valve, so um we're going to make sure that the receiver's got the proper level in it. We're gon na fill it up to the three-quarter mark and then uh go from there and it just shut off at about seven psi. So that's a good sign.

So we know the low pressure control is working all right. We're going to check the liquid level in the receiver now kind of hard to tell because there's a lot of stuff going on in here. But the liquid levels like right here. There's a temperature change right here and i can feel it with my hands.

And that's only about a quarter of the receiver, so we're going to add some gas to it now, so we can see the liquid levels about halfway now, so we got a little bit more to go. I put five pounds in we'll probably do another five pounds. So you can clearly see, i know you're looking at some lines, but the liquid level is right. There see where it goes from 114 to 120.

That's our liquid level! That's the three quarter mark, so we're now three quarters of the receiver. That's a discharge valve you're. Seeing in front of you so we're going to do a leak check, we got field pieces new leak, detector right here, it's the dr82! So let's see i'm picking something up already where's it coming from. Is it my hoses or what all right? Let's check these guys out, i said in the beginning that this was kind of a budget compressor change out.

You know they didn't want to spend any more money than they had to, but those things always end up biting me in the butt you know. Like i mean it is what it is, but when i usually change a compressor like this, i usually put in a new dual pressure: control, new contactor dryers. You know that kind of stuff and because we're doing a budget job i didn't put in a new pressure control. I didn't put in a new contactor.

Now the contactor looks like crap, but they don't want to change it. Okay, but that low pressure control hose is leaking and it's one of those rubber. Whatever hoses, i really don't care for those um, but that's what i'm going to put back in i'm going to do a hot swap here in just a minute. I have a guy going to get a pressure control hose and we're just going to pump it down to a low pressure, pull it off real, quick and swap it out as fast as we can um.

You know, but it's just funny, because you know it seems like it'd, be better just to do it all at once. All right, so we got the system pumped down, got the new hoses, just stupid things. Okay, then, what we're gon na do is feed it into here. That's how you do that all right! So then, we're gon na put this guy out here, like that this guy's going to come in here little nylog right there lube up the surface.

That should be good. Only thing i don't like about these silly hoses is there's so much slack left over. What do you do with all that? It's just kind of silly, but oh well. Okay, so same thing, we're gon na put just the tiniest bit of nylon right here, spin it just for lubrication a little bit of nylon right there, easy as that, that should be good hot swap, is complete.

We'll have to tie this up. That's what i don't like about those is just that excess. It's gon na leak check my flare joints, nothing, it's got the lighted tip on it, so that's really cool, there's something going on over there. I don't know what it is.

Nothing nothing. This is where it was leaking. Nothing good, nothing checking here, nothing all right and i'm gon na double check that flare, nut make sure it's not leaking back there yeah it's picking something up over there. All right, i just tightened up on that flare nut a little bit so we're looking good now, nothing's coming up we're good to go double checking the insulation.

What i think that might just be what is the dysfunction? There is there's something going on there. It was just this stupid cap right here. This thing the packing, because i have it actuators leaking. You can actually see it right there, but that happens when you have them actuated so because i have the packing loose.

So that's normal. Okay, we're done with this thing. We're gon na wrap our tools up and uh hand it to the customer. I think it's like 55 degrees.

Right now. It was like 65 ish something earlier, but they're already putting food in there. They have a delivery thing going on, so we're done for now. So this video was actually shot - i don't know back in june or even may of 2021, so we're now uh october 16th of 2021.

As i'm editing this um, i've got a bunch of this footage that i'm still kind of working my way through, because it was certainly one of the busiest summers we've had in a long time. So this was, as i said, in the video, a low budget special. The customer, you know i'm not going to go into details, but they didn't want to spend any more money than they had to. Because of something that's about to happen.

Okay, you guys can probably do the math with that one, but uh we went back in with r22, i'm not a fan of using alternatives, but still if the customer wanted me to use an alternative i certainly would have. But in this situation we just went back in with what was there we utilized the gas that he had. We did have to add a little bit more to account for the refrigerant leaks in the system. Okay, i did my best to try to repair some of the refrigerant leaks.

There certainly is going to be more leaks in the system, but i did fix a major one, because i went down and investigated the evaporators. I saw that the oil was actively dripping off of one of the lines and it's like i can't really walk away from that, so dove into that fix that um change. The compressor never found the root cause of the compressor failure. But in this situation the customer really didn't want me to do anything else now, um also.

At the same time, i did not autopsy the compressor i kind of wish i would have in hindsight, especially since we saw those oil shavings in there. I don't know what caused the compressor to go bad, but it was clearly locked up. It was just running and humming and nothing else was happening. So that's a hard one.

It's hard to say that system was also very old. Doesn't do regular preventative maintenance? I mean it was just beat up. You know it's one of those things, but sometimes you just do what the customer wants to do in this situation. I changed the compressor.

We topped off the charge i fixed a few leaks. I do want to point out. You know those roto-lock valves. Those things are amazing.

I love them. Whenever you have a service valve, that's failed. Sometimes it can be difficult to find actual service valves that bolt down to the units and these rotolock valves man. I use these all the time.

I kind of make my own service valve. They don't really need to be supported, they're, not that heavy, and you know if you pipe them accordingly, they work amazingly well, you just have to make sure you have those adapter fittings for the rotolocks. If you guys want to know where to find those adapter fittings, all you need to do is open up the copeland mobile app. They make them after market too, but i prefer to go with the copeland ones.

The same thing goes with the rotolock valves themselves. I prefer to use the copeland ones whenever possible. This particular rotolock valve, though the valve itself was not a coplan one and when you can tell the difference between the copeland and an aftermarket rotolock valve, typically, they don't have two service ports if they're an aftermarket. Typically, if you get a copeland, rotolock valve it'll have two service ports which allows you to put like a low pressure control or something like that on the actual road lock valve itself, but yeah just open up the coppola mobile app insert the model number and the Model number of your compressor and then go down to service parts within the koblin mobile app and it'll, give you the copeland part numbers.

If your local supply house doesn't stock them, they can order them. It's the copeland part numbers are right there. So it's really nice to have those and again um. You know it can make a standard compressor into a roto-lock compressor, if need be with the two different parts and or you can use them just as a service valve, it's a really cool, little tip um.

Other things that i just kind of wanted to cover really quick, because i know there's going to be lots of comments about it. Yes, i was brazing with nitrogen. No, i don't always braise with nitrogen, but in this particular situation i was able to um and then on the unsweating of the compressor and unsweating of the components. I get a lot of people that comment about.

You know taking out dryers and different things like that, because i'm gon na release the moisture back into the system, and you know i'm not really too concerned about that stuff. If you know i mean i'm pulling an evacuation on the system, it's not going to release that much moisture into the system, but it's always best practices to cut out, filter, dryers and different things like that. But there's certain times that if you cut out a filter, dryer you're cutting out at least a half inch of the copper and it can change the piping arrangement of the system, especially if you now in this situation, i had the room. I could have cut the components out, but i didn't want to.

I didn't need to it. Wasn't that big of a deal i pulled a really good vacuuming as good as i could considering the system has leaks in it. I was purging with nitrogen the whole time. I wasn't concerned about releasing any moisture into the system, especially since i was purging with nitrogen displacing everything, i'm not too worried about it.

You know and again i do agree that moisture is bad for a system. It can lead to issues down the line, but you also have to be practical in in when you're doing things. Sometimes you know you you, you don't want to have to re-pipe the whole system and i'll say that whenever i'm working on really small uh refrigeration units, there's nothing worse than cutting out components and then you've got to redo certain sections, especially on the little stuff, because Sometimes you can deal with 5, 16, copper and different stuff, and i don't carry that. It's always a pain but anyways um, nothing else too crazy.

This was just a basic, run-of-the-mill compressor change. You know we just try to do our best. You know and like i mentioned in the video normally when i quote a job like this, i quote: a contactor compressor, um pressure control, put in a dual pressure: control, crankcase, heater, all that stuff um. You know, and in this situation you know the customer really did like they stress so much because of what's about to happen.

They're, like please, don't do anything extra just do the minimum just get it operational, they didn't even want me to come back and and follow up and verify proper operation like they're, just like just get in get out and move on. Okay, so i did what i had to do. I got the system operational. I know there's still refrigerant leaks in it.

Like i said, i pulled a half-assed vacuum, it was, you know, i mean it did okay, but it didn't pass the decay test because it was leaking. You know. So it's just one of those things. The customer didn't want to go any further and i can't force them to you know i just give them what they want.

You you can give a big picture, quote they're not always going to approve the big picture repair. It is what it is. You know we just got to do our best. I really really appreciate you guys making it to the end of this video.

Please forgive my office, it is a dumpster fire right now. I've currently been building a new computer and i it's just a mess. I can talk about it, maybe on a live stream or something with all the specs, and all that this is my first edit with the new computer, we're going to see how it goes. I went crazy big with the processor and it's nuts, so let's hope it makes a significant improvement on rendering and different things like that and can save my sanity, because it's been kind of crazy how long things have been taken and how slow it's been going.

So but again, please forgive the office i'll, try to get it organized and fixed back up. I really really appreciate you guys, making it and uh. We will catch you on the next one. Okay,.