Overheated AC Compressor Quick Cool Down Video
Kung Fu Maintenance demonstrates the KFM fastest in the west method for cooling down an overheated AC compressor quick.
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I’ve got an AC not cooling here the compressor’s overheated and way hot to the touch, so
what I want to do is show you how to pack this nice and cool it down.
Nothing’s running. The fan motor’s not running. The compressor’s not
running, but the compressor’s definitely overheated. I suspect that the fan
capacitor’s bad, and so the fan motor’s not kicking on. I’ve got a video
showing how to secure this fan capacitor, so you can check that out how to
make this a little safer. Anyway, I wanted to show you how to get this
going if your compressor is overheated.
I’ve already pulled the disconnect as you can see back here. There’s the
disconnect. The fuses are probably bad also. Now I’m going to go ahead and
discharge the capacitor. The capacitor holds a charge in it even after the
power’s disconnected, so I’m holding my insulated screw driver in the
bridge that leads to the capacitor, and that way it’s going to discharge
any charge that’s still held in there. Then I can go ahead and pack the
compressor in ice here to cool this thing down. This is about the fastest
way to cool this down to run cold water and just pack it in ice to get it
cooled down. I’m just going to put my ice water deals. I just kind of keep
my freezer full of ice and ready to go in case this happens so I can get
these cooled down faster. Some people use a garden hose and run it over the
top. I used to do it that way. It takes a long time. This way it’s 15 or 20
minutes to get this thing cooled down and ready to run again.
Now that we’ve got that on there we’re going to go ahead and pour some cold
water and go ahead and start to cool this off just a little bit at a time.
Again, I suspect the fan capacitor is bad. I can go ahead and plug the
disconnect in and check that out there. It’s also possible that it shorted
the breakers inside the unit. I have some new fuses, so I’m going to go
ahead and change the fuses out here. It’s just now starting to get warmer
out here. It’s probably 95 degrees today. With these fuses just pop them
out like so and then our new fuses and make sure everything’s tight here.
If need be we can tighten these up with the common screw. Press our new
fuses in place and make sure those are tight and everything’s tight there.
Now we’re ready to plug this in.
I’ll go ahead and plug it in and see what happens at my unit. OK. The deal
gave a sound like it was trying to start. I don’t know if you heard the
buzzing sound, but the fan motor did not kick on. My guess is that that’s
the fan capacitor. It could also be that the fan’s bad. It could also be
that the fan itself is overheated. I’m going to go ahead and change out the
fan capacitor. We’ve pulled our disconnect. Again, I’m going to discharge
the capacitor. Again, holding only the insulated portion of the screw
driver I’m going to neutralize both capacitors, discharge both of them like
so. Again, I’ll secure this capacitor a little bit later. You can see my
video on how to secure a dangling capacitor later if you want to, but how
now it’s a matter of getting this thing going.
Our compressor is still hot, so it’s not starting. That could be a number
of things. It could be a bad capacitor for the compressor. It could also be
a shorted compressor. It could be burned wiring. It could be a bad
contactor. The capacitor does look a little bit tired. The hard start kit
looks a little bit tired too. I kind of think it’s just the overheated
compressor. Again, it does feel hot to the touch, and usually it doesn’t
get hot to the touch unless it’s able to get power to it. We’ve got our new
fan capacitor there. Again, I put some more water on the compressor. I
think that we’re just going to go let it sit for about 15 minutes, but I
really want to see if the fan motor itself is going to start with the new
capacitor. I’m going to go ahead and plug the disconnect. If the fan starts
but the compressor doesn’t come on then I’ll go ahead and disconnect it
again and let the compressor cool down. Here it goes. The fan started.
Now I’m going to pull the disconnect, I’m going to discharge the capacitor.
I’m going to let the compressor cool down, and then everything should start
as normal. The compressor is overheated due to the fan motor stopping due
to the capacitor going bad. As we can see, with the new capacitor it
started right up, so now it’s just a matter of cooling down the compressor,
getting the unit started up, and I’ll go ahead and secure that dangling
capacitor to make the unit a little bit safer and better.
Now our ice has been on our compressor for a while. Things seem pretty
cooled down. Go ahead and dump a tiny bit more water on. We’re going to go
ahead and fire this us and see if it turns on. Let’s come over here to the
disconnect, and we’re going to listen for the fan to kick on as well as the
hum of the compressor. There it is. The fan kicked right on and the
compressor kicked on. Now what we’re going to do is stay with the
compressor for a while to make sure everything gets nice and cold. It’s
already flashing pretty cold. I’m pretty sure all it was, was our fan
capacitor was bad which caused the compressor to overheat.
This is a pretty easy repair. Now it’s just a matter of cleaning everything
up, so I’m going to go ahead and get all of my bottles and everything out
of here. I made this unit a little bit safer and a little bit better. It’s
flashing nice and cold on this side. This side is still kind of catching
up. This here is our accumulator. The entire accumulator feels nice and
chilly. It’s just catching up on that back side here. I’m pretty sure we’re
going to be good there, but I’ll stay with it for a little while. We’ll go
ahead and put our cover on and clean things up here. We’ve got our
compressor cover on down there. Everything’s like it should be. I secured
the capacitor. I’ve made things a little bit safer. I’m still waiting for
the back side to get cold here. There it goes. I’m starting to feel it.
It’s starting to get chilly. I’ll probably just make sure our fan baffle
screws are all nice and tight. It’s flashing ice cold now. It’s nice and
cold. We’re good to go. That’s all it was, was it needed a new fan
capacitor. It burned out. Our charge is good, so we’re all set there and
good to go.