This video is brought to you by Sporland. Quality, integrity and tradition. Well, we've got a glycol unit. Um, basically they've got warm beer coming out their beer taps.

This glycol unit is supposed to keep the beer cold from the beer. Walk into the Taps and it's not working now. Currently it's not turned on. They had another company out here.

the beverage company. They said that it has a bad compressor but they're not Refrigeration techs. So let's get in here and see what's going on. My allergies are gonna love me.

I'm stuck in a hole over here and it's all dusty on the other side of this fan coil of which customers actually supposed to replace and look at this. this is missing. Anyways, that's a whole other story. This is the one years ago.

It's a five ton and it has one. what is it? A 14 inch duct? one single 14 inch duct run. that's probably about 50 feet long with like four drops on it. But on a five ton, the thing can't breathe at all.

The blood pressure is like breaking through the roof static pressure. but it's just joking. Um, all right. so we've got our unit right here.

Condenser doesn't look too dirty. don't see any scary stuff going on. this is that. uh, seeing these pop up more and more UBC I Don't know if they're gonna pop up anymore because they're from Ukraine um from that Kiev place or whatever or something like that I think is what? I remember I don't think that they, uh, they're gonna be getting built there anymore.

but um yeah, nothing too crazy. Doesn't look too dirty. condenser a little dusty, but I can see through it. So let's go ahead and start this guy up.

Let me find the plug all right. I Had a few Choice words to say because I had to crawl over there to get it plugged in because they unplugged it. Um, let's go ahead and turn it on. Turn the pump on.

Okay, pump works. Plus let's turn the compressor on and see what happens waiting for the digital display to kick on. 64. compressor is making the click of death.

Um, so the compressor is not starting. so let's investigate these starting components. and then we also need to investigate whether or not we're getting the right voltage. But before we go any further, we're going to pull the start cap, make sure it has a good start cap test that you can clearly hear the compressor was turning off on internal overload.

It has a clicks on well overload because it has the clicks on relay so it wasn't starting. So we'll test this guy right. This start capacitor is supposed to have 315 microfarads and we've only got 95. So we need to start by trying to change the starting components first.

More than likely that's going to be our problem. We'll change all the starting components, so this is a Tecumseh Compressor I'm going to get the information, pull up the Tecumseh app, find the part numbers, and We'll see if anybody local to where I'm at has them in stuff. All right. I Put a temporary start capacitor on there just to see if I can get it to start before I go to the supply house.

Let's turn it on, see what happens. Compressor starts: 118 volts, 6 amps so the compressor started. We're gonna let this run while I'm gone. That way, it can potentially bring the product down to temperature and then I'll get new starting components.

hopefully. I Still got to do the research to find out if they have them, but this is a Amrad or Turbo it's a Turbolytic 50. it's a universal start capacitor. Now, technically it doesn't go high enough, but I basically maxed it out and got it almost all the way to 300 microfarads.

It was enough to start the compressor. We're definitely going to put the right one on there, but that capacitor does not go to 315 microfarads, but just jumping everything together. I Was able to get it close enough to start it so we know that the compressor seems like it's working. Okay, so like I said, I'll let it run while I'm gone.

it should be almost down to Temp if not down to Temp by the time I get back and then we can troubleshoot further and potentially put new starting components on it. So I've been gone for about an hour, hour and a half or so because I'm kind of out in the boonies. so finding the supply house it's a little ways away. But in the meantime the unit came down to temperature.

it's at 30 degrees and satisfied. Compressor is warm. Um, and it's fan motor is warm. Everything's good.

So at this point I'm going to shut it down. We're going to change the capacitor and then we'll turn it on and then looks like we have a suction port on this guy. But I Don't see the need to put gauges on this depending on the amount of refrigerant that this guy holds. Um, how much refrigerant? 0.44 pounds of refrigerant? So what? Half a pound? So eight ounces of refrigerant? just under eight ounces or something? I'm not going to apply service gauges for something like that.

The fact that it came down to Temp kind of implies to me that everything seems okay. so we'll change this start count, start by turning everything off, and then swap it out. Now, one of the things that stinks. I'm going to kind of go off on a rant here.

Tecumseh is a compressor manufacturer now. They don't always make their own compressors even. Copeland does the same thing like on some of their smaller fractional horsepower compressors. Other companies will make the compressors.

We come back here. Sometimes you'll actually see data tags I Don't see anything on this one. What you can do sometimes too, is if you pull off the main tag. at least on some of the Copeland ones, they'll be the actual manufacturer's tag underneath it.

But the problem I have here is I like to go OEM on all my starting components I Like original manufactured parts and a couple different reasons. but one of the main things is because you maintain UL listings. you know they're easier to put in and stuff. For the life of me, this compressor with that model number does not exist in the United States and none of their service bulletins or literatures that myself or the supply house looked up has any information about this compressor.

parts do not cross. The only thing that happens is they give you the option to cross this over to another Tecumseh Compressor that is not identical. The starting components are different because I looked at that too so it's kind of silly of Tecumseh to do that. Makes it kind of difficult for the service guys and you know something that doesn't make sense to me was yeah, this compressor says made in France Okay, it's manufactured in the Ukraine the unit but probably not anymore.

I Feel bad for that, but it it just seems silly because they manufactured this for the United States it's running at 60 hertz. I Mean it's just dumb, just dumb. But anyways, let's get on with it. unfortunately because I got a non-oem the cap doesn't fit on there so I get to be a capacitor Bandit over here I Taped the cover on Just for safety.

it won't fit into the the holder anymore. I Hate having to do this, but it is what it is. Um, we're ready to go turn the pump on. Always make sure the pump is moving.

This guy on should start up. Let's see what we do. Oh, it's still satisfied, huh? Go figure. I Thought it was going to start.

Let's have a look at what the temperature? Yeah, it's accurate. It says 30 degrees on my thermometer so their uh temperature controller is accurate. cap wasn't in. very good.

The guy that was here before me from the beverage company left it out. You don't ever want to leave those off because dust will fill up there we go: Starts at about 6 amps, 116 volts, 6.2 amps. Let's see what this guy says right here: Compressor 1 3 horsepower, 9.5 amps I Think we might be losing a condenser fan motor too. like I was making a funky noise.

We might have to go all the way back to the supply house to get a condenser fan motor. that stinks, huh? But yeah, that connection is going bad for sure. Um, but yeah, we're under current on the compressor so we're good. We want to be careful, but take my blower die out.

Blow that guy out to all the dust out. Try not to breathe it in that way we clean that guy. It's just tucked in such a corner over here. Show my distaste and anger for these units again too.

Everything's Metric. From that, it's like a 10 millimeter or nine millimeter like the screws holding the motor in Metric like it's just dumb. Yeah, so got a new one in my uh viewers will probably be happy that I'm using Wego connectors I Know a lot of my European viewers don't understand I've been starting to use them a little bit more. They're pretty cool.

So we're going to zip tie everything up and hope that I put the right motor in and got the right direction. It was the pump so it needs to spin this direction. Needs to spin this direction. Wait a minute here though.

Yeah, needs to spin that direction. Let's see if it does. Okay slowing down I Shut it off. Yes, it is spinning that direction so we are good to go so we'll start this guy back up.

We'll zip tie everything up and we should be done for today. Hopefully no more squeaking sound coming from the condenser fan motor. That's a plus. it's moving air right across the condenser.

Everything's looking good like I said I need to zip tie a few things up, protect these wires, and uh, so let's do that. I Guess I should check the motor current too. It's allowed to run 0.38 amps so I'll get a current tester on there so we're right within spec. We're allowed to run 0.38 we'll run 0.35 and we're moving air like we're supposed to.

So I think all is well. All right. So I went ahead and put that filter media back on there. We cleaned the condenser, the unit's operating, put all the panels back on.

it's back where it's supposed to be. Just to give you guys perspective, this is what I'm working in. There's like this air handler right here and it's tight duct work over there so I could get over there. It's just you know, having to straddle this guy.

So I gotta organize my bag because I got everything everywhere right now at the moment. so that's it. We'll catch you on the next one. So I was working on a glycol unit or a beer line Chiller or a beer chill or whatever you want to call it.

Okay, it's a tiny Chiller It takes refrigerant right? usually with some sort of a heat exchanger, typically a flat plate heat exchanger on the newer model units. Okay, so on this particular unit, you have a flat plate heat exchanger. You have refrigerant going in one circuit, and then it's separated by stainless steel. and on the other side of that stainless steel is glycol.

right propylene glycol in the case of this unit, and the propylene glycol circulates through the bath and then through the beer lines. And we chill that glycol so we're chilling a secondary media secondary fluid, which is the glycol with refrigerant. but the refrigerant and the glycol are never mixing. Okay, they just come in contact via surfaces whether it be copper lines or flat plate heat exchanger and that's where the heat exchange happens.

Okay, so the refrigerant cools the secondary fluid, the glycol which runs through via the pump on this unit some beer lines and it's usually ran in a trunk line with multiple beer tap lines and it keeps the beer cold from the beer walk-in in the case of this video or sometimes from the beer cave or wherever the beer kegs are stored. It keeps the refer or the the beer cool as it's on its Journey to the Beer tap where when the bartender pulls it they pour the nice cold beer into the mug and then they serve it to the customers. Okay and the situation of this. The customer was complaining that the beer was foaming as they were pointed into the glasses, but interestingly enough, customer said if they would pour two to three pitchers of beer and then dump those down the drain, the fourth and the fifth pitcher would be cold.

And the reason why that happens because they cleared out all the warm beer out of the lines and then they were able to get a direct run and it wasn't gaining heat fast enough to where they can pour it and it wasn't foaming. But clearly customers have the highest profit margin on alcohol, right? ironically cost them almost nothing, but they sell it for, you know, 10 times as much. but they don't like to waste beer because that's money down the drain. Okay, so they called saying the glycol unit wasn't working I went out there I found that we had a bad start capacitor.

Now my frustration really kicked in on my journey to try to find the OEM starting components when I'm changing starting components on a compressor I prefer to change them all In the case of this compressor, it had a current sensing relay, a clicks on overload, and a start capacitor. Okay, so when I went to the Supply house actually I called the Supply House I couldn't find the compressor I looked up online I did a bunch of research on my own that compressor in any of the literature and data that I have the Tecumseh app of which I have that compressor did not exist called the Supply House they're like it's not a Tecumseh Compressor I said yes it is I'll you know I'll bring you a picture Went down to the Supply house couldn't get the starting components simply because it's a foreign compressor. it was Mint or it was made in France and it really wasn't I guess meant for the United States I mean it's really odd though because it was running at 60 hertz I Don't know if they run at 50 Hertz in France but I know a lot of European countries run at 50 hertz and typically if you get a compressor, it'll be rated for a different frequency I Know that some things can run dual frequencies, different things. but anyways, that's a whole other conversation for another day.

But usually if this is meant for a foreign country, it'll be stamped with the voltage from the foreign country. You know it won't be set up for a hundred and you know, 20 volts like we operate here and it'll run at like 50 hertz or something. Okay, so it didn't make sense as to why we couldn't find this compressor in the United States or even the starting components. Now they had things that you could cross it to to a more commonly used compressor.

but I didn't need to change the compressor I just needed starting components. So I was bummed out that I couldn't get the OEM starting components. but I found an aftermarket start capacitor. but I kind of mentioned in the video I prefer to put OEM start components in there.

One of the biggest reasons is I Hate when you try to put a capacitor back in a system and you can't get a cap on it and you have to tape it up or something to protect it in this situation. That's what happened. Couldn't get the OEM start capacitor and I had the cap from the old capacitor wouldn't really fit to protect this one so it wouldn't fit in the little holder for the capacitor. I had to electrical tape it.

It sucks that I had to do that, but you know it is what it is. it's working. Uh, that this video was actually filmed like a year and a half ago I was just in my archive footage and I edited it down but compressor's still working on that thing. It's kind of funny like you know.

I I can't believe I mean I shouldn't say I can't believe more and more I'm noticing cheaper and cheaper equipment being installed in these restaurants. Okay, it's a bummer because some of the higher end name brand equipment that make glycol units they're no longer being used. and they're They're installing this really cheap budget type equipment and it doesn't last. And then you run into problems like this.

you know? I Guess you get what you pay for, but it's just interesting because you know it doesn't trickle down, you know? and I'm the one that has to solve the problems right? and I hate having to put something in like that, you know? But again, it is what it is and it's operational. I Really appreciate you making it to the end of the video and listening to me rant. Thank you very much. If you haven't already, please consider checking out my website Hvacrvideos.com a couple other ways.

if you're interested in supporting the channel. The simplest way to support this channel is just watch the videos from beginning to end. That really is the easiest way. Excuse me, it's been a long day.

Um, a couple other ways. Truetechtools.com if you go to Truetechtools.com If you're interested in purchasing any tools, use my offer code. big picture. One word at checkout on most of the items on their website, you get a eight percent discount I get a small commission from that.

couple other ways to support the channel: PayPal Patreon YouTube Channel memberships and I'm dying over here. There's links in the show notes of that video uh, or in this video for PayPal Patreon and YouTube channel membership. So if you're interested, if not, just watch the videos from beginning and that's the easiest way. Okay, I really do appreciate you guys.

thank you very much I'm going to end this so that way I can go hack up whatever is driving me nuts in my throat right now. Again, thank you so very much. Uh, the support, the feedback, the comments, everything I get from you guys it is amazing. Okay, thank you thank you thank you I will catch you on the next one.