This video is brought to you by sportlin quality, integrity and tradition. Well, while doing a preventative maintenance, one of our technicians noticed that the compressor for the walking cooler is making a horrible sound. Now the walk-in is still maintaining temperature. The customer has no complaints, but i personally wanted to come over here and see what's going on, because i want to get ahead of the issue before it becomes a friday night.

Compressor change out so we're gon na jump on the roof and take a look at this compressor uh that doesn't sound good. There are rocks bouncing around on that compressor. I am absolutely blown away. This thing is still running and it actually just satisfied on me: go figure that one's running off it should be running off of pressure, so the system's probably got high pressure right now, but i'm gon na put some gauges on it and watch it cycle.

I just want to verify, but i mean i can tell you, there's rocks in that thing. So it's bad remember when you come across these service valves. If it has a packing like this, you want to loosen it before you actuate the valve it'll help to save it and make it last longer. Okay, it is running.

Listen to that sound man. We definitely got a compressor change out. Coming up. Question is, do i have to do it right now, or can i schedule this for tomorrow, fun stuff, it's one of those early mornings.

I was supposed to get up at like or i was supposed to leave at 4. 30.. Luckily, i'm not scheduled. I just wanted to get up early because i'm going out to the desert and it's going to be hot, but thank goodness for cruise control too.

It's one of those little little things that you really really appreciate. This is the first van i've ever had that had cruise control and uh, i don't know, there's something about being able to pull your foot back and relax. That makes it super nice, but i want to point something out: it's really windy outside today and i've got my ladder tied off, but it's really important if you don't bring your rope down to where the two ladders connect. Theoretically, so you have it tied up there if this was to blow away the ladders could still separate the two ladders.

So that's why i have it shackled together right here too, so that way, if it was to try to blow away it, doesn't try to pull the ladders apart, all right we're up on the roof. It is miserably windy today, just a strong, steady gust, which just makes it ridiculous, my hat's trying to blow off my head. So it's okay, it's just one more thing to add and listen to the problems, but we have no 115 volt power and the restaurant is not here yet. Usually i have to plug in down in the building and then run an extension cord up.

So we're going to use my cheater plug, you got to be careful with these um. I am going to use the unit power. So what i'm going to do is. I have power turned off right now at the breaker, which happens to be on the roof and uh.

I'm gon na disconnect everything for the compressor energize. The circuit hook up my cheater cord and then use this power right here to power, the recovery machine and everything until the customer gets here. Probably i'm not in a huge rush, and it's not really hot. It's only about 86 outside right now, okay, so i'm not getting all fancy.

I didn't put core removal tool on this guy i mean i could certainly make it go faster. I'm not inverting my tank, i am using bigger hoses, but i'm just using my gauge manifold set because you know i got plenty of time all together. We record it or recover just under eight pounds, so right at eight pounds of gas got the nitrogen hooked up. I start out with an initial on the test feature so that way, i can make sure that i hear the refrigerant moving all the way or the nitrogen moving all the way through the system, so we're going in the liquid line pumping all the way down.

Coming back up here and we turn it down to the braze function and then just let it go. Uh there's going to be some parts where it's not going to get nitrogen while you're brazing. You know it is what it is. You can't always be perfect, so so foreign so foreign.

So that's why i can't have nice tools. I always use it for things. I should have yeah we're going to take a drop of the nylon. Put it right on the swivel part kind of spin the flare nut that way it doesn't bind up and don't grab a hot glue, pull that guy off bit more.

Take a drop of dialogue right on here, not much about the nylon write it on my hand. That's crazy, so so so all right we're almost done compressor's braised in um. I need to cut this uh suction dryer out of the picture because we don't need it anymore. So i'm going to do that.

Real quick, just put a piece of pipe to fill the gap and then we'll get the vacuum pulling on this thing. So all right, we are hooked up and ready to evacuate. I'm gon na open the gas ballast right over here turn this guy on and then once we get down to a reasonable 1000-ish microns i'll, close the gas ballast and we'll let it keep going, i'm actually gon na stop. While this is happening clean up my messes a bit and take a lunch, i brought my lunch today so sit down in the shade eat my lunch.

Let it evacuate all right. I'm sitting down over here eating my lunch. It's got some tuna and crackers um the vacuum's kind of stalling out at 3, 200 microns and uh. The oil looks really cloudy, so i'm going to do a quick little oil change on this guy.

I ended up throwing a second hose on there because it was just dragging ass. It's starting to get hot too it's 107 in the shade, so, but i'm just doing the electrical while i'm waiting. So when i first came up to this compressor to look at the noise, the sight glass was flashing and i thought it had something to do with the damage in the compressor, but i'm starting to think. Maybe not.

I think that this system has a leak. I highly doubt that it has any leaks on my brace joints, so i'm going to check those right now. I guess in hindsight i should have done a nitrogen pressure test, but even still i mean i got to get this thing up and running. So i'm going to go ahead and put a little bit of gas in here leak check.

All my braze joints make sure that there's nothing there and if there's none of my brace joints, then we're going to fill it up. Let it run and i'll do a leak check, downstairs and see what we can do. I i highly doubt they're gon na approve me to fix any other thing anything else on this right now. I really wanted to replace the whole condensing unit and stuff, but um you know their times are tight, so they just wanted to go low cost so uh, i'm gon na put some gas and see what happens about 50 psi in there not much, but i just Want to see, if there's any leaks on my stuff, if there's not, then i'll go ahead and charge it up, because up here is the only leaks that i can't fix, while pumping it down potentially like the discharge line and stuff so looks like we might have To check that rotolof, maybe we got something on that.

Rotor lock check this guy over here, oh, maybe just the service valve those things leak. Keep checking all this check. My flare nuts from here nothing here. The discharge line is the biggest one, because that's the one you can't fix yeah, there's no leaks on the discharge line, no leaks on the suction line.

I to look into this roto lock right here, because there's something funky going on there stupid packing these packings. Do that? That's why, when you loosen these packings, you got to be careful. It might have been just that that was driving me nuts. All right! That's taken care of i'm just going to leak check the rest of everything else, with the bubbles around this area right here, just to make sure there's nothing funky going on.

There hope nothing blows up running remember this is a reciprocating compressor, piston driven, so it doesn't matter which way it goes. So we don't have to worry about rotation run in sight, glasses, flashing, we're gon na. Let the system operate for a little bit, then we'll clear it up, but we just don't want to overload it. According to the tecumseh apple, we're allowed to run 10.9 amps and we're right at about 11.2.

So we're not too bad we're just gon na. Let it run and pull the box down in temp. I'm gon na go down there and see how it is how cool it is. It probably didn't get that warm in the box.

This is a rather long reach, so i had to have separate probes down here. Um but my box temp right now is still at it's still pretty warm and we've already got 13 yeah, so we're 43 degrees in the box, and we've got about 13 degrees stupid that that's not bad, i'm not going to adjust that expansion belt. For that. It's probably going to settle down a little bit more as the box temp comes down, we're going to check the other coil.

So that's that coil and then now i'm going to jump over onto this one and see what this one's running at and the second coil is pretty much the same. So we're good. I don't see any problems yeah this one's at 10. but, like i said, they're, both throttling as the box is coming down in temp and over here next to this coil and see what the box temp is 41 degrees yeah.

So we're doing good we're gon na uh, wrap this one up and tell them to keep an eye on it all right, um. I just cut the head off this compressor as i have not opened it yet. What i imagine to find i'm thinking that there's a broken motor mount is my thought, because of the way that it sounded when i was carrying it um, i don't think there's going to be any valve damage. I do expect to see some copper plating, though um you can obviously see a mess now i haven't opened this up, yet it's still full of oil too.

I didn't even drain into the oil, so all right, so this is uh. What the inside looks like so far, but we've got to uh, dig in a little bit deeper, i'm going to have to take some stuff apart, so i'm going to open it up a little bit more so far in here it doesn't look bad. I really don't see too many shavings from me cutting it. I tried to keep as much out as i could.

It doesn't look. I don't see any copper plating up here, but i'm sure we're gon na see it as we get into the the shaft and everything we'll probably see a bunch of copper plating all right. This is not looking good. This oil has got some thick sludge in it.

Okay, little history, there was a burnout on this system about eight or nine years ago, and when that happened, we installed the new condensed unit, high acid filter, dryer and all that different stuff. Okay, so i'm thinking that this sludge that i'm seeing floating around it's like real, thick thick oil, like you, had runny oil, but then you had the real thick stuff, see, watch i'll, pour it into here and i'll. Show you guys. Okay, so you've got the runny stuff, but then look at right down here.

This sludge that's coming out just real thick real thick, so whatever that is, is nasty, okay, um, but as i was taking the oil out, i found these now. I thought this was a reed at first, but it looked and there's also some. I don't know if this is from me, cutting it up, there's some like sticker in here, but um. This, i think, went across here right across here and held this guy, on which i believe, if i remember right, is a suction line coming in.

I think if i remember it, but yeah there's a piece that went across like that and connected right there and it's completely sheared off, but that doesn't account for what this is. This is another piece that i found in the bottom of the compressor, so there was some destructive action going on here, but the weird thing is, it still had compression. So that's why this is like some sort of a bracket. That's interesting, but all right, we're gon na keep going all right.

Let's see what the valves look like. They're there, they're intact they're not broken, definitely loose. No there. There don't see any problem.

Let's get this one out stuck on the nest. See that this this oil. That's in here is not healthy for sure all right, let's uh move the pistons doesn't look like anything was hitting the piston. I don't see any damage on the piston, so i don't see any in the cylinder.

So the valve. That's why it's still a compression there's. Nothing wrong with the compressor or the valves. There was just something floating in the bottom of the compressor i still haven't figured out where this is from.

This thing was obviously getting hit by something, though, because look at how twisted up it is, and this strap going across interesting, interesting, interesting. All right, we're gon na keep going. It's very interesting. The only place, i'm seeing, copper plating it's right here.

This is pretty good. Obviously, it's going to happen where you're going to have a high concentration of heat, which would be right there, but yeah. That's that's pretty good. I expected to see a lot more copper plating in this compressor.

This was a big system that had been cut down. I think i said in the beginning of the video this used to control the entire restaurant medium temp, when it was on a parallel compressor system and when we had to take it off, we individually broke everything down each one and gave them their own condensing units. But okay, well, i'm still trying to figure out where this came from. This is a mystery to me.

I see where this came from, but i haven't figured out where that came from yet i figured it out. It came off of right here. Let me pull this out so right here. I believe this is the muffler.

Forgive me if i'm not naming that right, but i think that is the muffler because - and this piece fits perfectly right there, so this broke off. Why, i don't know, fell into the bottom of the compressor and then this broke off too. There's no doesn't look like there's any piston damage. There's no valve damage.

It's very interesting, all right! Well mystery solved! That was kind of a fun one. I like to find the the the root caught. Well, i i never really found the root cause, but i i like to investigate to figure out what was going on. Okay, i never found out what break broke, that little bracket that held the muffler down.

Basically um. I i never got to the bottom of that, but i did go back and follow up. Everything's been fine. This video was actually shot, probably all the way back in june um, so yeah, it's everything's been fine.

We've been back to that restaurant several times. To do preventative maintenance services and everything's been going good on it, but that system too was a parallel rack system. I don't know if i've ever shown it in a video before it was a very, very small system. We had two compressors, they were piped in parallel and uh.

They ran the entire medium temp of the restaurant. So when the restaurant was built, they had two medium temperature walking coolers. They had uh one two, three, four, five: six, seven, eight, nine ten, eleven eleven evaporator coils that were in different reach and coolers, and everything ran off of that rack system. Um.

And what happened was they lost? One compressor? This i was out of town many years ago on vacation and they lost one compressor and we were able to isolate it and they still had enough. It wasn't that much of a demand, so they were able to run the system off of one compressor, and then we had given him a quote to replace the compressor and the customer really wanted to get away from that system. So they had to pull everything off of that rack and do individual condensing units. Apparently they had this same prototype, the same restaurant style built in another area too, and they were just having a whole bunch of problems with it.

So that's why they wanted to go to individual condensing units, of course, that was going to increase their power usage and and all that stuff, but most of the time these customers aren't really into the whole high energy efficiency, stuff they're. They just want simplicity and ease of use, you know, but it was a pretty neat system. You know i don't do any of the supermarket stuff uh. You know any of that fancy stuff, but it was always fun to work on that.

Unfortunately, they just didn't want to fix it. So anyways, that's not what we had today or in this video. This video was just the replacement compressor had failed, like like you, guys saw that had failed on a preventative maintenance or we found it on a preventative maintenance. You know just making noise again.

The customer had no idea, but we just told him like hey. We got to get to this before it becomes a problem. You know um and yeah. It's just pretty much straightforward.

Compressor change out no big deal on that. I also didn't show it in the video, but i ended up changing the compressor contactor too, because that thing was just completely burnt. This is located out in the desert where we have a lot of issues with the sand blowing around and stuff. So we always, you know, we're pretty proactive with replacing those contactors.

I contemplated changing the fan motors, but i didn't again they were in the midst of the covet thing. So, as we still are and um we're just trying to you know, give them as much bang for their buck. Basically, you know and you don't you don't want to spend on everything and they seem to be doing okay. We made it pretty much through the summer as we're coming towards the tail end of it.

So i think we were okay on that um, but you know cutting these compressors open if you guys haven't done so i highly encourage you guys to do it. It really does help you, i mean, i still don't understand everything, but you know really helps you to visualize what goes on inside of a compressor, and you know what happens when you have a weak, suction valve or a weak discharge valve, or you know, different stuff, Like that, it really does help and to be able to see copper plating in the compressors. This one had barely any, but to be able to see it helps you to understand why it's so important to pull a proper evacuation. Also talking about evacuations, you guys saw that i ran into some problems.

I couldn't get my perfect vacuum, so basically it wouldn't pull below. You know 500. It was just hanging right around eight nine 900, and that was as low as i can get it and the decay wasn't great, it wasn't horrible, but it wasn't great and uh. I did have now to to preface that i did have that service valve cap on when i was doing the vacuum, but it was still pulling crap through even with a cap on so then, when i pressurized the system, i found that it was leaking at the Packing and of course, because i had loosened the packing so those packings they always leak, and especially on these systems, man you're never going to get ultimate perfection.

It pretty much doesn't exist, at least on the commercial side, because you have so many mechanical parts in these systems, solenoid valves, especially if it's ever had refrigerant in it before then, you've got contaminated oil all over the system that has refrigerant still boiling out of it. It's just a nightmare: if you ever do nitrogen pressure tests or sweeping with nitrogen you're going to run into problems when you're trying to evacuate after that, so just understand, at least from my experience, you're, never going to see a perfect vacuum. You're! Never going to see perfection but of course i always strive for perfection. I always try my best to do what i can, but you also have to be practical and know when enough is enough, and you just got to get the system back up and running, really really appreciate you guys taking the time to make it to the end Of these videos, do me a favor if you haven't already please consider subscribing, as i say, all the time you guys, if you're interested in supporting the channel, there's a couple different methods that you can do.

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