Look at this guys. Look at this evaporator. That's that's an evaporator man! That's insane! This video is brought to you by sportlin quality, integrity and tradition. We got a call on a kitchen, ac, they're, actually saying they got two acs for their kitchen and they were saying that yesterday their kitchen was reading, like 90 degrees at the thermostats, and it was hot and there was a funny smell um.

So we're gon na dive into this guy. I come up here uh. I know this is hard because this dang prodigy board is difficult for you guys to read, but it says cooling and it's scrolling. I've got a first and second stage call and a fan.

Call no issues so i'm just doing a visual inspection, seeing if i see anything funky going on, let's check in the indoor blower motor, i think it's vibrating all hell, but it's running, i'm not seeing anything jumping out at me. Filters look pretty beat well, not too bad. I guess um okay, condenser fan motors are both running. Condenser is dirty, but it doesn't look horrible, interesting, okay, so i'm going to jump into the prodigy controller and see if it shows any error messages something funky's going on here, because we have first and second stage call, but this compressor just shut off.

But we don't got an error message on here. Theoretically, it could be the economizer, but i don't care so much for these older prodigy boards, because they are a little difficult to decipher. What's going on here, i'm uh pulling the filters out and the filters are plugged on this guy. There is low pressure cuts, but they're like plugged solid.

You can't even see light through those see if i can barely anything to those things so yeah, that's not good. The evaporator doesn't look the greatest either. I'm not gon na be able to show that to you right now, um, but i was just talking to my service tech because i have another guy here doing a preventative maintenance. While we were here - and he said when he walked up that this exhaust fan, the belt was shredded on it.

So it wasn't running that kind of answers. Some questions because the manager had said it smelled kind of like something was burning in the kitchen and the ac is working. I thought. Maybe we had a bad indoor blower motor on the ac, but the exhaust fan was down.

So this is a pretty critical exhaust fan for the restaurant, so they just didn't realize they had a whole exhaust fan down, so we're still gon na go through the ac, though i couldn't catch it on camera. But this compressor came on for a minute and then it turned off it short cycled and then it said: uh low pressure, compressor number two. So we need to get service gauges on this, but i first need to uh, i'm gon na power it down and we're gon na inspect this evaporator coil and get into this guy and see what's going on here, i have a feeling it's gon na be dirty. I mean it's not as bad as i thought it would be.

I know it's probably a little. Oh yeah there's some chunkers in there for sure yeah yeah lots of chunkers all right. I ended up just pulling the side and look at this guys. Look at this evaporator, that's that's an evaporator man, that's insane, so that would certainly cause low pressure, but i don't think that's the issue.

Knowing this is a linux unit. I bet you anything. We have a bad txv for the second stage right there, but we're gon na go ahead and clean this evaporator first we'll give the condenser a rinse too. I'm pretty sure the condenser is clean, but we're gon na give it a rinse and we're gon na properly clean this evap and brush it down.

I ended up going to get a vacuum because mine was broken um. I ended up pulling the economizer out a couple. Plugs a couple screws we're gon na start, vacuuming, some of that evap, the big stuff off and then we'll brush it. I got some brushes too, let's see if we can get some air flow on this bad boy.

So i put these down to keep dust from going inside this stuff's pretty caked on. So it's not really. I'm gon na have to get the brush on it. It's pretty dried on.

I'm just gon na get what i can off with the vacuum and then we'll start brushing and we'll just let it fall down onto here. Get this stuff too yeah that comes off nice and easy try to get as much dust as you can out. Unfortunately, no customer is going to pay for a preventative maintenance. That's going to pull these economizers out and stuff like that, so this is just something you're going to have to do on these units every couple years.

Nobody has the money to budget for four hours of tearing down one unit. I mean rest on stone, i should say so it's more on a reactive kind of a basis all right time to get in there with the brush. So i don't know how well that'll work, but we taped it off. Try to keep water from getting in the ducts.

We're gon na have to spray this down with cleaner. So i peeled off as much as i could and then we're taking super concentrated blue venom pack and just spraying it on there and letting it foam up. We're gon na have to rinse it here in a sec. I'm just doing a small area right now to see if it actually works because uh this is insane.

This stuff is just like hard, solid grease. It's actually working really well uh put the plastic down, so i just hit it and uh wherever i spray. That stuff is coming right off, so that's cool - hopefully it's not going down in the duct, but look at that stuff coming out the drain pan nasty. Now i am using the the coil cleaner, the blue venom pack, and it's very uh this one right here, i'm using this and it's very uh - has an interesting smell to it.

So you got ta, be really careful that customers aren't gon na get overtaken by the smell or something like that um, but yeah so far, so good, so we're gon na go and do the rest of the coil with the blue stuff. So so so it's about as clean as it's gon na get. I can see right through the coil. Looking good, it's not as nasty anymore.

All the way back into there. Looking good, so we're gon na give it one more rinse. Then we're gon na put some evaporative coil cleaner and then some sanitizer on it using the green evap cleaner, now pump this up and we're just gon na give this guy a thorough rinse. Let it get in all the spots and then spray some sanitizer and put the unit back together and figure out.

What else is wrong? I have a feeling we're gon na have a bad txv, so i got the strike back. Sanitizer now, just spray it. On the surface and leave it there, you're not gon na rinse; it just get it all over there just for peace of mind for the whole virus thing and let's get it all over that guy. Do it on the other side too, and any of the surfaces that you're touching to you can basically back your way out of the unit and clean everything.

Just pulled the plastic off. No water got down in the ducts, so super cool. So it's hard for you guys to see, but there's a damper down there. That is closed.

I want to look into that. I vacuumed as far as i could reach. I can't reach all the way down there, but yeah there's a damper straight down, so we'll have to see if we can't get to that from the bottom side. But this guy's all clean, i'm going to vacuum this real, quick and then we're going to start reassembling.

It and start this unit up go all right. We are back together. We're gon na have to get them some metal mesh filters, but everything's reassembled, the back's on drain pan actually has a crack in it. So we're gon na talk to him about replacing that um.

I rinsed around the unit we're gon na go ahead and power it on uh. The blower assembly needs to be pulled and clean, but that's not what i'm here for i know you guys can't see it, but it's just in its startup process. It's got a call for g indoor blowers running okay, all right, i'm gon na go ahead and gauge up and we're gon na see. What's going on with that other compressor, this damn thing is rattling.

This unit has just a slight rattle to it, and this thing keeps rattling on me: okay, um compressor, number two we're running low, refrigerant pressures. It looks like sub coins non-existent. So to me it's probably gon na be a low charge issue, but before we go crazy with that, we're gon na find the liquid dryer and check for a pressure drop across the dryer um. Here's the expansion valve yeah.

We got a hot suction line, barely anything flowing through the valve, so um we do have a pressure port right here. So i guess we could theoretically check that, but it sounds like it's low charge to me. Um everything looks fine in here. Okay, we'll open this guy up because i had the other condenser side off and it didn't look like there was any refrigerant leaks, but we'll open this one up and see.

I don't need to get a temperature clamp. I can just i feel uh. That's the crap out of my hand, but i felt both sides of the filter drier. There's no temperature differential across that so we're gon na get some refrigerant and add a little refrigerant and see how it reacts to that all right, i put i don't even not even a pound of gas in it and it's reacting well.

I just wanted to make sure it wasn't an expansion valve that was stuck shut or something uh. So with that being said, we're gon na go and power down the unit and do a leak check real, quick and see if we can't find something before we go too crazy. I did a quick visual and i don't see anything in here really quickly looked. I mean nothing jumping out at me, uh, nothing in here heck.

I don't even see anything over here. My second stage is right here and i had the other side off and i looked at it. I didn't see anything i should have leak checked the evaporator when i had the cover off, but i didn't know yeah who knows: oh well, um, so let's go and hit this guy just run. Oh jeez wow already going crazy, another zero! Well! That was easy.

Um. First place, i check go figure all right, yeah, let's get some big blue on here, so we're gon na get right up in here. Remember when you spray the big blue, you want a steady stream, oh yeah, it's a big leak, really big leak. Look at that! It's right on the spot, where the suction line runs over, that that is weird yeah.

That's that's! Probably it's probably the vibration. Oh it sucks. It's like right up in there rubbing through huh, all right, i'm gon na pop the top a little bit and get a better look at it. Well, there it is and it rubbed against the big suction line, but it doesn't.

I i put bubbles on the suction line. Suction line doesn't look like it's ruptured, so we'll uh we'll definitely put a braised joint on the suction line too, where it rubbed through but cool. Well, that was an easy leak to find um. Now the question is: do i need to quote this technically supposed to? Let me make some phone calls all right.

I got approval to fix it, so we recovered just under three pounds of gas, and i think this thing probably holds like nine or something like that. So it was pretty low, we're going to go ahead and kind of prop the top up as best as possible change. The dryer fix the leak, try to knock this out as fast as possible. I've shown this before, but i take these fitting brushes.

My supply house has them these guys right here and i cut the end off of them, put them in the drill and they do really good to get into those really tight spots right there. Now this is going to be a problem because it's worn the copper down so much. I would not be the least bit surprised if it flares open, because it's so thin right there, so i'm going to have to braise it very carefully trying to keep it from opening up, because that hole basically will just flare open and then the bottom side of This is going to be a pain in the butt to braise on, but we'll get it okay, let's see. If we can get this thing up come on.

Okay, you got wet towels all right. This all stuff has to come off. I'm always afraid of that thing. Lighting up all right, let's see what's happening.

Okay, we're gon na put one right down here, trying to keep all this stuff from catching on fire, see what i did there, but instead of heating up that joint okay, i'm just gon na bring a little bit up here, just for giggles. Okay, that's good! Now i'm gon na step over here. Okay, that should be plenty of solder. I just got the solder to stick on there, get that uh spot.

It's burning the towel. There you go. I think that might be good. Let me do a visual inspection see if that got it.

The mirror's missing there, my flashlight yeah, thank you yeah. I got it yup all right cool, so we laid a bead right on that guy, a big old fat bead, and then we laid a bead right on that fitting uh go ahead and cool it. Well, it didn't take me long to figure out. I forgot a joint, so i braced that real quick.

Now, i'm gon na finish the vacuum. We ain't getting all crazy with the vacuum today, either we're pulling through the manifold. So i've told people there's times when i do it. So you know i prefer to use my big fancy setup, but not today, i've got this rubber material that i use for door sweeps for walk-in freezers and it works really good when you have vibrating lines or anything like that, so it doesn't look the prettiest, but I just zip tied the rubber there so that way, if it does vibrate, it's not gon na, you know it'll at least have that little barrier, so we're gon na go ahead and start putting the top back together.

Um yeah we're getting there all right, just finished the vacuum, pulled it down to about 900 microns it's about as low as we're getting today. Again, i'm not always perfect, guys uh this guy's calling for 14 pounds. Eight ounces, this guy's open i'm gon na open it up going in through the high side just gon na. Let it go.

Let's go over here. We're charging the second stage. 14 pounds. Eight ounces, all right, we're still charging, but i could do a leak check.

Real quick: we got about five pounds of gas in the system, nothing there and then we'll come in here. Double check right up here, where we had leaks. Nothing there hard for you guys to see in there we're good, okay, let it keep charging okay. We are running linux says we should be running about uh, it's it's it's about 112.

So we're going to call it 115.. So linux says about 514 and 150. we're there a little bit now we are pulling a little bit of outside air um and i still need to fix that damper. But that's not going to happen today.

So this is looking pretty good, see, there's no latent load. 20 degree split, but it's also pulling outside air 85 degree return air that could be some building there too, because it's pretty hot in there um 65 degrees supply. I'd like to see that drop down. We need to put our gauges on the first stage and see how that one's operating sub cooling is high, but remember we're using discharge line pressure, so that's kind of a messed up metric.

There see what we got. We got a three degree approach approach. Temperature, less indicates an overcharge. Well, we don't have an overcharge we're just going to let it run for a bit um, i'm going to gauge up on the second stage or first stage a little bit lower in pressures um.

Let's see what my sub coin's about 16 on that one 18 degrees superheat before i go too much further with this, i'm not going to mess too much with it um. I want to fix that open damper, closed damper, we're going to leave this be for now. It seems like this is i i'm coming across this more and more with this whole covet thing going on, because the restaurants aren't doing preventative maintenance. You know, and i mean i can't blame them - it's still frustrating but because you know a call that could have been a refrigerant leak turned into a seven hour day, because i had to completely disassemble the ac.

You know degrease the evaporator like no tomorrow and put it back together, but i got ta say man, the the viper blue, cleaner, kicked ass, all right um. That stuff i mean you're, not really supposed to use it on an evaporator, but it did a great job. Cleaning off all that gunk, i still had to brush it and stuff too. You got to make sure you rinse that stuff down, really good.

Okay, really good um took care of that put the unit back together. I would have loved to have cleaned the blower assembly, but i wasn't there for that uh. I have not gone back and adjusted the um the damper yet, but we will excuse the coke nose um. We will, when we go back and finish the preventative maintenance, because i had someone there doing the pm too, so we'll get that taken care of um.

I did put in a spoiling catch-all and i liked i didn't. I didn't really address this, but i was editing it. I need to point it out. I like to oversize my dryers.

I like to go back in with a 16 cubic inch uh. You know to make sure that that we have enough uh cleaning capacity, essentially, okay, so that way the dryer doesn't get plugged up a lot of times on these linux units. They come with like a 0.53, a five cubic inch or even an eight cubic inch, but i like to go back in with a 16 whenever possible, um or you know just the biggest that i can get on those units. But you got to make sure that you support them.

The support that i used wasn't like the best thing in the world, but the old dryer clamp from the old emerson dryer. I was able to get it on the bottom of the spoiling dryer and then be able to still screw it into the side of the ac condenser. So that way it's supported, went ahead and pulled a vacuum on the unit and everything else pretty much checked out. Okay and oh, and that's the other thing too, you guys saw how i took that rubber membrane material.

Now, that's just a rubber material. I get from case parts company, it's a door sweep material um. I don't even remember what the part number is, but if you open up a case parts catalog you'll see it just look under walk-in hardware and it's like it comes in like a a 16-foot roll or something, and it's just like basically 16 of an inch thick Rubber, it has a lot of purposes. Obviously it's meant to be used for a door sweep, but we use it to wrap lines that might rub together or something like that.

Just like i did in that situation, you don't got to get super crazy. I just put some zip ties on it. You know and then that way, if it ever did vibrate or rub up against something again we're hoping that it would rub through the rubber before it rubbed a hole in the copper, essentially, okay, so um in the future. I'd love to get in there and pull that blower assembly out, but again it wasn't bad enough.

I was able to fix the vibration. I'm sorry, i was able to move the the suction line. So that way, it's not going to rub up against anything and uh. You know we'll bring it up to the customer.

Well, actually i mean i did tell them. There was a vibration, but you know they only want to fix really what's broken right now, but i had to clean it to be able to diagnose it. So that's how i got away with that one yeah: that's it really really appreciate you guys making it to the end. If you guys haven't already, please consider supporting the channel there's a couple different ways that you can.

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That's it for this one. We will catch you on the next one: wow wow, okay, audio sync, oh, that was making funny noises all right shut it. So i can record you.