This video is brought to you by sportlin quality, integrity and tradition. We have a complaint of a air conditioner, that's not working for the dining room of this restaurant right now, so we're gon na jump into this looks like it's running at the moment, but this fan motor is not running. I don't know if that's bad or if it's just not cycling on right now, we'll have to uh open this guy up all right. We got a couple things going on here, but i opened it up and there's a big old burn on that contactor right there.

That's not good. That looks like it's for compressor one, but the other thing is that we've got one condenser fan motor running and then, when i went to go open this panel up this one shut off one of these compressors. So there's no compressors running right now and, let's see the fan motor is not locked up. Okay, it could very well be because of this electrical burn.

Um, let's go right here now. This has uh compressor lockout boards when they have compressor lockout boards. What you can do is check from x to c, and we have 24 volts from x to c what that means. Is that we're off on compressor, lockout one of the compressors is off either i'm moving it around right now, either because of a low pressure control or a freeze, stat or a high pressure control.

So obviously we're going to have an issue here. So let's go ahead and uh looks like this thing's trying, oh no, that's just being pulled backwards by the other fan motor, so we're gon na go and power this guy down and we need to fix this electrical short first figure out what happened here once we Fix that, then we can test further to find out if we have a bad fan motor or what's going on here. Also this uh combustion area right here is just a walking fire hazard, it's full of cobwebs and everything. So i went ahead and flicked the gas valve off and i'll shut the gas valve right here and bring it to the customer's attention that they need to do a proper cleaning on this and start up and then inspection of the heat exchanger.

Because we got some pretty good rusted out spots in there too um but yeah just to be safe. I shut off the gas because we don't want that to fire up and cause a fire. So all right, i'm gon na grab me a new contactor. It looks like we need one with lugs and we'll have to figure out if we can reuse the wiring or what all right.

I was able to undo some zip ties like two of them and then pull this wire and run it on the bottom. It's not ideal, but i don't have any 10 gauge wire with me right now, so i was able to do that so now we can go ahead and replace the contactor. This is a standard 24 volt with lugs. So i got a new one right here.

We're gon na start replacing it so let's go ahead and undo the top. Always what i suggest you do. Excuse me the smoke is killing me right now. I always want to take a picture before if you can of the wiring and stuff.

So that way, you don't forget anything, because even i forget stuff all the time all right looks like, for the most part, goes color to color. Pull these guys out. There's that that so blue and brown are power in common for the coil voltage, it's like pretty much all the yellow wires go to one side, black wires go to the other yeah man. This smoke is no joke right.

Now it's so like hard to breathe outside really shouldn't be working out here. Okay, so black goes to one side: yellow goes to the other and it goes yellow and black up here, two blacks on the left, three yellows on the right - and this is tight. So this is a three phase system, but carrier puts two pole contactors in we don't know what caused the burn on the contactor. It looks to me like it was a loose wire, but then again the lug is pretty tight in there.

So, who knows could be damaged? The compressor could be all kinds of things all right, so we're gon na go ahead and mount this guy everything looks good in there. There was a little collateral damage on this wire right here. This looks like it's for a condenser fan motor and there's enough wire to cut off the burnt piece, so i'm gon na do that. Condenser fan motor wire right here.

Don't know if this is the one that wasn't working or not, but there's like a burn mark right there. So we've got enough extra wire to cut it back, put a connector on there and try to start this bad boy back up. Okay, this guy goes on this connector right here. Okay, i will clean all these wires up.

I just want to see if this stuff works so put that back put that back everything's, safe everything's out of the way we're gon na turn it on and see. If anything blows up standing back out of the way compressors turn on one's running two's running this condenser fan motor is not running, but both compressors are running. Okay, that's a good sign. Let it run for a sec.

This guy want to check uh voltage and then check the capacitor, so we know that we have voltage because the other condenser fan motor is running they're wired to the same place. Both condenser fan motors get power from the same relay and they both share the same common. So i'm going to pull this capacitor out right here and dig in there and see if there's something going on in the capacitor seven microfarads. So the capacitor is uh going bad, but i don't know if i trust that motor i'm probably going to go pick up a capacitor and a motor just to be safe.

All right, i picked up a new capacitor. It's a dual run: 1010: we're gon na fire. This guy up and see how that motor does. I also picked up a motor, i'm pretty sure, i'm gon na replace it.

I talked to the customer and they were kind of okay with preventatively, replacing it no matter what, but i just want to kind of see where it's at so, let's turn it on uh everything's, clear, yeah, condenser fan motor is trying to start even with the new Cap and it's not going - and we know it has power because it's powered from the same power as the other condenser fan motor, i'm going to get in here and test it yeah. I pulled it open tested here and at the relay and we have power and the condenser fan motor is not running. So we're going to go ahead and swap this guy out got a little rust, buster, just a penetrating oil it on there. Let it sit while i'm getting my wrench.

I always keep a little extra sandpaper in my tool bag for just this. You know. I don't know why i'm doing this, because i bought a blade, what the heck i'm fighting with it, for no reason all right. So i went ahead and shortened the other condenser fan motor too.

So that way we don't have a bunch of wires, bundled up underneath getting in our way. So it's all the right correct length. Now everything goes right here, nice and good. It's like, i could have gone just a little bit shorter, so i'll pull a little bit more up here and just run.

One zip tie right here heck. I don't even need to run a zip tile, just put a piece of tape, but this way we don't have a crap ton of stuff dangling touching lines or anything like that. Okay, so this guy's ready to start back up everything's safe blade's, where it needs to be we're gon na fire it up and see what happens all right. I still need to put some screws in this, but i think i can do that after the fact.

So here goes nothing condenser fan motors running like they should be everything's good, everything's, safe, wires are shortened all right. We're gon na put the panels on and we're actually gon na power it down real quick, we'll put the panels on, but first i'm gon na. Do a um analysis of the refrigeration system? All right, i got my probes hooked up all right and i'm using the new large pipe clamp, the jl-3 lc, all right that thing's meant for 7 8. All the way up to, i think three inches four inches.

It's a big clamp and it basically has large large capacity so but yeah same same construction meant to uh. You know score the line if it's not on there, nice and neat all right. So the first stage is uh we're set up as a piston 10 to 12 seer, r22 superheat's, not too bad. Our targets are a little high, meaning that our actual pressures are a little bit low than what the targets are um as usual.

This unit has airflow problems and uh. It's also pulling a bunch of outside air because the economizer is bad. So it's just manually opened you'll, see it in the temperature split, there's almost a 30 degree. Temperature split, 29 degrees, uh airflow, that's not calculated correctly.

Let me set that up go back to the beginning. I never never profiled the system. Let's see what this is. Sometimes it'll say it right here.

It's a 10 ton on the charging chart on the side. It'll often say what it is, so we're gon na go to system info. Let's see what the estimated airflow is. We're gon na change it to package unit.

We're gon na go to btus we're gon na change it to btus we're going to change it to 10 ton and we're not a txv we're going to change it to fixed orifice and we're going to hit submit all right. So this is what we're looking at uh, i mean it's kind of okay, it's getting better as it's stabilizing out 100 degrees outside temperature, splits still 30 degrees, but again it's pulling a lot of outside air. So that's why air flows on the low side, the indoor blower assembly, is pretty dirty. I noticed so.

Let's see what measure quick has to say: airflow is low. I'm going to clear the system unstable, it's saying, airflow's low and i agree with that. Airflow is low on this again guys. This is something these customers usually don't want to dive into too much.

Okay, we're going to jump onto the second stage now and see how that's doing so. The second stage is kind of looking about the same. I'm not too worried about it. It's looking, okay, that td is going to be high, but that's because pulling outside air temperature splits high, not a fan of that, but it's not going to be perfect.

I think that's good enough for here we're going to go ahead and wrap this one up. I did check current draw on the motor it's running good, so i just need to put all the screws back in the panels. I checked the belt tightness the belt's good. I had taken this off.

I need to put screws back in that, but they'll be happy now, just so you guys have some context. This video was actually shot back in right at the beginning of the summer of 2020. um. I found this in my hard drive.

I had forgotten about it actually, so that's why i was complaining about the smoke and the fires and if you heard or paid attention to what was on measure quick, it was 100 degrees outside currently right now, it's april 17th of 21., we haven't quite hit 100 Degrees out here and currently cross our fingers, we don't have any fires going at the moment. Okay, so um, you know this was a basic service call just a normal air conditioning service called. There was a few things going on. It's really important to not get.

You know tunnel vision and not pay attention to everything else that you might potentially come up on. You know. Obviously you want to use your senses um. You know.

I noticed that the combustion area was full of cobwebs and stuff and i didn't find or didn't feel comfortable leaving uh it capable of firing up in heat mode. So i went ahead and turned off the gas um and on a side note, because this was before um the summer we went through the entire winter and the customer still because i did bring up to the customer, but now that we're in april 21. I never went out there and turned that gas back on so that furniture that heater hasn't ran all this past winter. It was one of those things.

You know you bring it up to the customer and you know and tell them hey. We need to pm this thing and they never have us do it, but granted for a majority of the winter they didn't have people in their their dining rooms. You know we just barely opened up our dining rooms. I think we're at 50 capacity now um, where they're allowed to fill people fill the dining rooms up to 50 capacity, but that just happened.

So here we are coming into the summer again um, but anyways a whole nother thing going off on a tangent there. But you know situational awareness, paying attention everything, that's really important, so um you know, went through some basic troubleshooting steps. Now i didn't show schematics or anything like that, but i mean the basic sequence of operation. Thermostat, you know, senses whatever temperature, it desires to turn itself on or off.

So you know, and it sends a power up to the unit, turns on cooling and the unit wasn't cooling, essentially okay, so i was able to walk myself through there. There's some pressure, switches and stuff like that it was pretty easy um. You know to work my way through because i'm very familiar with the unit. Okay, it's always important.

You understand the sequence of operation of the equipment you're working on so that way you can better diagnose. Okay, so we changed the contactor. Then we moved on found the condenser fan motor wasn't working, we did check power, but then we tested the capacitor to see. If that would work, the capacitor was low.

It was a dual capacitor, even though i only showed one reading. They were both reading low um went ahead and changed the capacitor. The motor still didn't work. We tested voltage again confirmed it was bad change.

The motor i left that little part in about sanding the condenser fan motor blade off, because sometimes that happens you know halfway through. I realized hey dummy. Why are you sanding? This blade off? You've got a brand new blade. There's no point you know.

Sometimes i do that kind of stuff i get caught up in the moment so, but also understanding that this unit was not performing at a hundred percent of its capabilities. Okay, um airflow was a big issue on it, and i've said it so many times it comes across all the time. On the commercial side. With these restaurants, we always have airflow issues and majority of the time they do not want to address the issues.

Okay, we bring it up to them, saying hey, you know what this unit's not doing as good as it should be, but you know it's going to cost x number of dollars to fix to replace the duct system to to change the plenum. You know majority of the time the problem's actually at the plenum um because uh you know they have a plenum and it's too small or there's not enough taps on it. You know issues like that, but most of the time the customer's like it's working, you know the to them the expense to repair the ductwork or upgrade the duct system. Just isn't worth it so hey! You know i can only do what they want me to do.

I give them the information and they choose what they want to do there: okay, um. So with that being said, we have to understand and be able to interpolate and say you know what this unit is doing, the best that it can. Okay, that's where the importance of the term benchmarking comes in okay, whether using an app or something like that to be able to set a guideline for the next service technician and say: this is how this unit should be operating being the conditions that it has. This is the best that it can do because there's nothing worse than the service technician after you trying to chase out a problem who may not be as experienced as you to be able to say: hey, there's a ductwork issue, you know or he's trying to meet Certain numbers or get some certain performance when the unit just simply won't, do it without the ductwork.

So at my company we utilize electronic invoicing and we have all of our information in our invoicing system and we have history, so we can go through and see. The last technician service notes: we can read the invoices and say hey. Chris was here. He said this unit is underperforming because of duct work.

So therefore you know they can. You know not chase down a ghost, essentially, okay, um. I really really appreciate you guys making it to the end of the video. I say this all the time, but i truly do it is so humbling to have the comments and the support and the emails that you guys give me.

Thank you so very much. It is amazing um, it's just awesome. Okay, if you guys haven't already check out my website hvacrvideos.com, you can pick up hats shirts, all that good stuff. Other ways you can support me uh via patreon, there's links in the show notes of this video youtube channel memberships.

Paypal donations yeah. All of that helps. Okay. I really do appreciate you guys.

Uh. Remember i go live monday. Evenings 5 p.m, pacific on youtube. As long as i can get off work, and then i also go live on the hvac overtime channel, with my buddies friday evenings about 605 pm pacific - and we just kind of recap the week so again appreciate you guys and we will catch you on the next One: okay:.