Now I think I can fix this fan up a little bit. It just seems like the lid is not down all the way. Pull the screw out and I got kind of a fast way for resetting these lids take my screwdriver and just turn it to the side a little bit a lot of times that’s all that is needed to get a stubborn condenser lid and there we go now. That seems a little bit better and wobbles and rattles a little bit less and now the lids on properly not sitting all crooked.
Woohoo yeah! There’s a reason that’s their alright! Time to get this roof cleared off but that’s another story. Well that’s a little bit better anyways. Thanks for watching Kung Fu Maintenance! Over and out.
I’ve been seeing even professional people struggling pulling wire terminals off capacitor terminals but I’m going to show you an easier way!!! Welcome back to Kung Fu Maintenance where I show you how to make the most common repairs you will need to make in your lifetime!! If you’d like to get the latest videos, subscribe, and then hit the little bell icon right of the Subscribe button and it will notify you of any new videos when they’re released for you! Welcome back to Kung Fu Maintenance world I wanted to show you the easiest way to remove capacitor leads is to take your flat blade screwdriver after you first pull the disconnect to or turn off the breaker and then discharge the capacitor bridging the herm and the common and then the common and the fan and then the easiest ways to disconnect all these is a slip your screwdriver underneath the leads and slip them off.
I see a lot of people struggling with using a pair of pliers and then pull them off this is definitely much much easier see this one and there’s so many different places you can get under there to disconnect leads in this does the least damage to the terminals doesn’t loosen them up and you can use this to release the leads from the contactor as well then so with this method you just want to take a little concern here with the way you exercise The Leverage when slip and leads underneath you just don’t want to bend the prongs the original connections and so that’s involves taking care where you put the leverage you know the fulcrum placing the screwdriver and exerting the pressure so that it doesn’t then the con capacitor leads or contact who leads so that they get pushed or bent together also a little bit of a Twist in some circumstances and certain areas can work out well given the screwdriver a little twist of the leverage on the screwdriver pushes up to terminal off works good and certain tight situations number of different ways but that’s going to make it easier and I think this is preferred to using a pair of pliers to pull the leads off because there’s less chance of you pulling it off and then it gives anyone a cut in your hand or something Leverage you’re exerting force and pressure and it gives you a bit more control and I think less likely to both to do damage both to yourself as well as to equipment this is my opinion but I thought I’d share it with you definitely had some crazy stuff happened the past few days and I’ve been trying to share some of that with you and some upcoming videos including what I showed you yesterday and my 5 plus best tips for unclogging condensate drains are clogged condensate drains in that video I shared my 5 plus best tips when dealing with condensate drain clogs for air conditioners heading those things off and showing some preventive maintenance hope you like this video These are steps you can take to head things off preventive maintenance always puts the maintenance on your schedule and by clearing the Lions and getting ahead of things getting ahead of a cooling season it can help prevent a lot of these things from happening they can’t prevent everything but you can have a lot of the majority of it and that’s going to save you a lot of time and effort lot of energy later on that way you’re not getting called off of everything if you can do it ahead of time for them to maintenance puts things on your schedule and that’s what country maintenance is all about making life easier for you and sparing you from as much trouble as possible hope you like the video
Kung Fu Maintenance demonstrates the trouble shooting of an air conditioner that won’t turn on. Diagnosing through testing that the breaker is bad.
We’ve got an AC not working. I actually already replaced the fuses and checked it out. We’ve got power here, but it’s not working. The compressor’s not hot, and the top of the fan motor’s not hot, so that leads me to look at the contactor. Looking at the contactor the contactor is just fine. It’s like brand new. I think it’s actually our capacitor, so I’m going to change that out. This is a dual cap, so it’s pretty simple to change out. I’m going to go ahead and pull my disconnect right here. I’ve got the brand new fuses in there. I’m going to go ahead and discharge the capacitor. Now when I check the voltage with my circuit alert device, we can change the capacitor safely. I’ll go grab that.
OK, so I’m changing out the dual cap here. I’ve got my new one. You always want to make sure it’s the same microfarad. This is a 35.5 microfarad. So we’re going to connect herm, common and fan just the way it is here. We’ve got to loosen the holder here, and then slip each of the leads off. This yellow one is for the herm, or hermetic. It’s not a bad idea to replace the hard start kit at the same time, but this one looks pretty new. There we go, herm. Make sure our leads are all nice and tight. Here’s our fan wire. Let’s get our fan going. Again, make sure that’s nice and tight if not we can tighten these up. When it’s fairly tight then I’m going to squeeze that down just a tiny bit on those two. That’s good. We’re ready to go.
There’s another way to wire this. You could do a single cap, a 35, and then do a single 5, put one wire to one side of the 5 and then a jumper wire going over, but that’s another story. I’ll save that for another video. I’ll show you that sometime if not today. Tuck this back here nice and secure. Then I’ll go ahead and fire it up or plug in our disconnect right here. That’s not good. OK. I’ll try. OK. The question is what’s going on. I’m going to pull the disconnect again and discharge the cap. Take a great look at all of our wire leads and verify everything is as it should be. And it’s there in front. Let’s check our wire in here. Everything is nice and solid there. The only thing it could be is this hard start kit or the contactor, so I’m going to grab both of them and just change them out. I’ll start with the hard start kit first. I also could verify we have both legs of power on both sides of the contactor or both sides of the wiring. It’s possible we lost a hot.
Definitely a strange one here. It could be a breaker. It also could just be that hard start kit. I’m going to start with that. Again I’ll just grab the contactor too while I’m down there. Here’s our new hard start kit. I’m just going to go one leg to each side. We’re all set there. I brought my multi meter also, so we may need to check out what’s going on here. I’m getting it set to volts. We’ll take a look here. Here are both sides of my fuses, and I may need to check there also. I plugged in the disconnect, but definitely no action here. I’m going to check for voltage across the contactor. This one’s pretty dangerous. This has got voltage live, so here we go. I’m going to check at the ground and then at each hot, one on each side. There’s 120 on that side, and 120 on that side. Up above across the contact we’ve got 120, and we’ve got 120. Going to both sides we do not have 220, which we should. Go into the bottom. We don’t have 220. I think we have a bad breaker inside the unit, but I’m going to do is check the disconnect box here.
Again, this is very dangerous high voltages. Power comes in on the sides and what we’re going to check for is voltage. The voltage out the sides. Going from each side to the ground we’ll put one lead on the ground and then one lead on the voltage. We’ve got a 120. We do not have 120 on this side, so we have a bad breaker or we have a bad connection here. This connection looks good. I think we’ve got a bad breaker. I can try tightening this up holding only the insulated portion of the screwdriver, and that’s nice and tight. I think I’m just going to re-verify here. Test into the ground. Yes, we’ve got a bad breaker inside because we should have voltage in that side also. What’s happening is we’re only getting one side of the voltage, so I’ll replace the breaker and we’ll be back in business. There it is, the broken off breaker. It’s completely broken off, so it was only getting one side of the breaker connected. That’s why one leg was connected we had 120, just not 220 or 240. It’s all fixed and good to go.
Kung Fu Maintenance Show shows you a couple tools that are commonly used to repair freon charge leaking schrader valves. KFM demonstrates the importance of wearing gloves and the use of the valve core removal tool to fix a bad refrigerant leak. The valve core removal tool allows the replacing of the schrader valve core without losing the freon charge.
I got two tool here, to show you. This one here, it’s got all the new Schrader valves inside the cap. This tool, you can use to tighten the Schrader valves. And this particular tool is used for replacing a Schrader valve without recovering all the refrigerant. It’s got this deal, here, that locks onto the Schrader valve, and it’s got, on the side here, a valve that you can close off, so you can take the Schrader valve out and replace it. Let me show you that, here.
Hopefully, this one, I can just tighten it down, to repair our leak, here. It’s leaking out a little bit. And, you just insert this onto the Schrader valve, and then twist it. This one seems to be tightened down all the way, the valve seems to be sticking and of course, I just made it a lot worse. That’s why you always want to wear gloves, because you can get frostbite, it is very cold.
All right, that one’s giving me a hard time, I’m going to have to use this other tool, here, to replace the Schrader valve. It’s even freezing the gloves. Okay. So, with this tool, you insert it on and tighten it down all the way. It’s going to be tight quarters, but you’ve got to do it… wow, the refrigerant really froze the gloves out. That’s why it’s good to — definitely important to wear gloves.
Now we’re tightened on there, what you do, is you insert the bottom of the tool and it’s got the same type of tool head on it, so you’re going to remove the Schrader valve from the inside. This is the tricky part here, it takes a degree of feeling for it to catch. To know that you’re actually pulling your valve out. It doesn’t want to turn, either, tight quarters. Got to get your channel locks on it and push it back. I’ll see if I can turn it out. It doesn’t want to budge, going to be a tough one. There we go.
Hopefully the Schrader valve doesn’t break, sometimes they do break inside, and then you’ve got to extract them. Make sure the bottom portion is screwed on enough, okay.
Let’s untwist it out, hopefully we got it. Now, what you do is turn the valve off right here; this’ll shut the refrigerant flow off. Then we can remove the bottom portion of the tool. Hopefully our Schrader valve will be inside. If we’re lucky, yep. There it is. So, there’s the old Schrader valve.
So, this tool allows us to replace the Schrader valve without taking the entire refrigerant charge out. So, there’s our old Schrader valve. Inside my other tool, we’ve got the new Schrader valve. And, all you do is insert this into your tool, like so, and then we put it back up inside, nice and carefully. This is tricky, because it’s tight quarters. Okay, tighten that all the way on.
Now we’re going to reopen the refrigerant line, here, so we can get past, with our Schrader valve, back up inside. You know, it takes a degree of feeling, for the seating of the valve, to seat properly. You always want to wear goggles and gloves, when handling refrigerant. Okay. Now we’re going to push it all the way up. Just gently feel for it, as we twist it in. Feeling for the valve, to seat. Feeling for it to seat properly. Which, it feels like everything’s going smoothly.
In hindsight, I probably should’ve replaced the Schrader valve when the system was turns off, so that it would have no pressure on the valve, but you get the idea. Just, we made it a bit more dramatic. But, also, you can feel what’s going on, differently, when it does have pressure by turning it off would minimize the amount of refrigerant lost, so that’s actually the better way to do it.
Okay, so I tightened it up as much as I could, there. The rest, we’ll have to tighten up with this tool, afterwards so, now, we’ll pull our valve back down. It does just not want to release, for me. Now, I’m going to go ahead and turn the system off, since we’re pretty much done in our…
Let me disconnect this way, we can kind of minimize any refrigerant loss, if there is any. Okay. There we go, it doesn’t want to let go of my tool. There we go. Sweet. Okay.
So, we got our new Schrader valve in. Try and give you a peek at what we’re looking at, there. And, now we can leak-test it with the bubbles. And, for further test, you can go ahead and start to put the cap on, and if you see any bubbles coming up, that would indicate that it is leaking. Tiny bit. Okay. Go ahead and tighten this down, with the tool. Okay. Still had a couple turns on it, there. Okay.
Now, sealed real good. Again, bubble test it. And, put our outer cap on. Again, looking for any bubbles. Seeing a little bit, there. Not seeing any more, though. That could’ve just been the air that’s in the cap, itself. So, we’re good, there. Now, I want to clean this all out with clean water. Clean off our valve, and our Schrader cap. Okay. We’ll tighten this all on. And, I’ll tighten it down a hair tighter, with channel locks. Got a little quarter turn past tight then we’ll bubble-test it again, to make sure. The high side and the low side. Everything’s good, there.
Now, I’m going to plug it in, so that it’s under pressure. It’s been about five minutes, so, it’s safe to plug it in again. And, then, I’ll go ahead and bubble-test it again, once it has pressure on it. All right, try our valve, and no more leaks. We’re good to go! I’ll go ahead and clean all the soap, off, here, with fresh water and we’re good to go.
So, that’s how to replace a leaky Schrader valve, without having to recover all the refrigerant in the system.
Kung Fu Maintenance demonstrates how to unclog a clogged air conditioner condensate drain that has made a small flood and wet carpet in front of an AC.
Oh no, wet carpet. Well it’s all right here in front of the air conditioner. And most times, what this is a clogged condensation drain line from the AC; it’s pretty hot these days. So let’s open this up and take a look. And where the leak is at, we’ll have different options, just kind of wanted to go through a bunch of different steps today on clogged condensation leaks. So let’s take a look here, let me open service panel door here. So it’s got this little keyed latch that that we need in order to open the service panel, I usually just use my screwdriver. That lets us remove the panel. Oh yeah, this one is actually at the pan. You can see how full the pan is full of water and it’s overflowing. You’ll see some setups out there where you’ve got a pan like this filled with water and if it overflows, there’s an exterior pan that has a condensate float switch. So if the pan overflows then it will trip the float switch until you can clean it up. My particular setup does not have it. Here’s the condensate drain, and what it has is a vent in the condensate drain so the entire drain line goes out back. There’s a trap right behind here for the vent here.
And so what we can do is vacuum from the vent or vacuum from outside. If water was overflowing right here, we’d actually want to vacuum from outside. My particular setup drains into gravel well. Because our clog is right here at the drain, it’s either at the drain or it’s in the trap there, most likely in the trap. I should be able to unplug it here and not necessarily need to unplug it outside. If I did need to unplug it outside, what I’d do is hook up my wet/dry vacuum back there, come over here and seal this side where I’ll pull in the water out with the wet/dry vacuum and that way it pulls all the way to the clogged drain here. So anyway, get this going, check it out here.
I regularly change air filters, so I’ll be changing the air filter today. And also add condensate pan tablets to the drain so it doesn’t form mold and fungus and all that funky stuff so that it’s not just water. So when they have a leak like this, it’ not just water, it’s actually treated water with anti-mold, anti-fungal, anti-coagulant, and it also keeps odors away, all that good stuff, anyway, going to be vacuuming this out right here. These drains work via gravity, just like normal drains, so it drains to a well out back where the level is lower than it is here at the drain pan and as well as at the vent. So as long as it’s lower there, it’s draining to there.
And sometimes if I hook up my wet/dry vacuum from here, we may need to go and put a cover. I usually use, when I have to cover either these vents or that outside cover, I’ve got these little tags that are very laminated material. And so I’ll just fold that and put that over the hole and that makes a really good seal. If you have a cap or something like that, you can use that, but I like to use these. Anyway, get this going.
I’ve got my nice little Stinger wet/dry vacuum, this thing is a tool of champion’s right here. This little Stinger wet/dry vacuum converts to a blower so it’s really useful for situations like these. So we’re going to be hooking up my suction hose right here, and the nice thing about this is it just pretty much slips right over the top, I can use my hand to seal the rest of it off. So here’s to the vacuum.
And I’ve actually got a plug usually right here at the area, so it makes it nice and convenient for getting this done. Plug it in there and we’re ready to vacuum and we’ll see if it pulls it from the pan or not. So ideally it’s going to pull it from right there and we’ll know that we’re clear. So here it goes. You can see a lot of sludge in there. So there’s definitely a lot of sludge in there and I also just want to ensure that the other side is clear. So, I either vacuum it from out back or what I can do is plug this side. So I’m just going to tear off a piece of this laminated deal that I showed you earlier like so. What I’m going to do is insert it and just block the condensate drain line right here. Block the hole and then run the vacuum and pull water from outside.
I only needed to do that for a little while just to ensure that everything was clear there. And then now, whatever I can, I’ll vacuum from the pan. Although, this is a slant coil so there’s not really much room to get in there but I’d like to vacuum out some of that sludge. The problem is you can see some rust in the pan. We want to avoid putting any kind of pressure on that pan, we just want to vacuum it but without pushing the vacuum because we don’t want to create a leak or put a hole in the pan. And it is older, it’s probably solid and it’s probably fine but, again, no reason to cause a situation.
Okay. So I’m just going to vacuum down in there, pull my vacuum hose up here. Let’s see if we can get any of that sludge. And there’s, again, not much that I can reach but slip that down in there and vacuum it up.
Okay, I got what I could that way. Anyway, so we’re all clear now and now it’s just going to be a little follow-up and preventative maintenance here, changing the air filter. This particular air filter is a 16 by 20 by 1. So it just slides out of this side here, this, again, is a slant coil filter. So now it’s just the preventative maintenance side. And coil is a tiny bit dirty but not too bad, definitely not the worst I’ve seen. Changing the filters regularly is really the key to keeping that all working good and running good. So let’s slip our new filter in, just going to make sure that the arrows that are on the filter are pointing the correct way. The arrow is pointing in, that’s where the air goes through. Let’s do the filter through the coil. All right, then we get this heat from the unit.
Okay, now what I have is these condensate pan tablets. These are really good in that they have, again, an anti-mold, anti-fungal, helps minimize odors and get rid of smells and irritants and stuff that can cause all kinds of troubles, especially people that are sensitive, has asthma or any kind of a situation like that. Anyway, it calls for at least two tablets for three tons; this is a two-ton system. What I’m going to do is try to position the tablets where they’re going to be dripped condensate on. Probably some of the sludge that we saw in there might have been from old tablets. Anyway, I’m going to put two in the front, back here. There we go. And then I’ll put two in the back also, if possible. This one doesn’t seem like there’s really any room to get to in the back so I’m just going to have to put them in the front again. I can try to push one down a little further but, again, I want to avoid putting any kind of pressure on that pan. It is solid but still just don’t want to make things worse. Anyway, set the tablets up there and the condensate will drop across them. This is better than bleach; bleach actually can cause some people some irritants. And so this stuff is a little bit milder than that but it also does the trick of what it’s supposed to do and some added functions. The anti-coagulant keeps dirt from clumping together so they really help keep everything going here.
So we’re all set to go here, just going to give one final little vacuum pull the rest of the water through there. Just to make sure all the sludge is gone. Okay, so now we’re all set there, Sting did its job. Let’s take a look at this water here and see all the sludge, yeah, yummy, delicious stuff. Okay. So now it’s just a little bit of dealing with the carpet. So, get that going, put my lid back on and my air conditioner is ready to roll again, ready to keep things nice and chilly and keep everybody breathing easier with the new filter and the tablets to keep everything nice and comfy and not stinky.
Okay, and again, if we did have a leak in the future, the nice thing of putting those tablets in there is the water won’t just be water; it will be treated water. It’s kind of like pouring a cleaning chemical on stuff. Okay. So we’re good to go there. One AC ready to roll.
One other thing I should tell you is some units will have two drains, a primary and a secondary drain. Especially your units on a second floor or if you have a unit where a unit is in the attic of a house, a lot of times you’ll have a primary and a secondary drain. Some out there might even have three drains, so just something to be aware of, you might need to clear them all.
Get the new albulm “Up Beat” on Itunes http://bit.ly/1hTPB2y
Amazon MP3 http://amzn.to/1hDrSPB
Spotify http://spoti.fi/1ioSVz9
Rdio http://bit.ly/1e7gVLh
http://Blog.KungFuMaintenance.Com
http://KungFuMaintenance.Com
Get The Kung Fu Maintenance E Book Here
I have got my leak detector here so I am going to do a quick sweep of the coils. Maybe I will adjust the sensitivity on this by pushing the sensitivity button here. I will put it all the way up to max sensitivity. Then I will sweep the probe around. All the coils, I am trying to put it in the back and see if I hear anything. I think it is reacting to the probe when it touches the metal. That is not really a leak but the probe being setup as max sensitive. I am really not finding anything here. Looks like we have a few little bent fins at the top here; no big deal probably was just when the unit was being cleaned. We didn’t find any refrigerant leaks there; I will have to check the back also.
Today I have a refrigerator that is low on refrigerant. I have got the unit unplugged right now. So, to get this going I am going to take off the back of the fridge. We want to save this panel because this panel because this panel is actually engineered to help this system run properly. It lets a certain amount of air through the back here and it is good for the unit to have the cardboard there so you do not want to just throw these cardboard pieces away. We actually need them and want them there.
We can look at our coils and they look pretty clean. First check on check on some small stuff, I am also going to be looking for any leaks. This does looks kind of suspect, right here. It has a braised joint and I see some green. Let me grab a couple tools and shed some light on the subject. Here is some light so that you can see a little better.
With the unit off I have got my refrigerant sensor; leak sensor. We have to adjust the sensitivity to be a higher sensitivity. Probe around this part right here… I am not hearing anything there. Now I am going to plug the unit in and be very careful not to touch anything. There it goes; the compressor kicked on. It seems to be reacting there but I am going to adjust the sensitivity to lower it down to the minimum. You can see here I have the minimum of the sensitivity. I am just going to put the probe right here again.
Definitely seems to be reacting with it right there. I think that is where our refrigerant leak is; right there. We see the green around it. So now carefully what I am going to do is use soap bubbles instead by spraying soap bubbles on it. Again, very careful this has voltage going on there. I am going to peak in here. Looks like right there. Very minor refrigerant leak, look at that… right here, there is our leak, very, very minor. Again, just seeing very minor troubling right there. I think that is where our leak is, right here. Maybe just a bad solder job. For the lack of it I will check this side also on the high side.
Everything seems OK there. No bubbles there, on to the next mission.
OK. Oftentimes when you go to work on a stove sometimes these get labeled wrong because their both two thirty amp breakers. A lot of times it’s a good idea to just turn both of these off.
Than you know the stove is off for sure. Anyway these are mislabeled. Range air conditioner air conditioner range. It’s not always clear.
Turning them both off is a safe way to go. Also you can just test it at the unit with a circuit alert device but that’s another way. But these are not very clear. I am going to try to make that clearer now.
I just reset this one which was the range and the timer started buzzing so I know for sure that this one is actually the range. So I am gonna take my sharpie and scribble out the air conditioner one.
So for sure we know that it’s the range. And on this one we know for sure that it’s the air conditioner. So I am going to scribble out the range.
Anyway I just wanted to make it clear that those are not always so very clear. Good to go.
Alright so going to clean the unit. Cleaning the coils. Doing an annual maintenance get ready. Spraying it down with some coil cleaner. This is an enviro coil cleaner. Pretty nice in that you just need to rinse it off. When you are doing inside units you don’t even have to rinse it off. The condensate mixes with the chemical. Works to clean it off. But with this stuff we’ll spray it on. Let it sit for two to five minutes and clean it all off. Get the coils nice and clean. This one has actually been cleaned a tiny bit already.
Rather hit these early. Hit them before they hit us. He’s got a hose and a spray nozzle. It’s just kind of top down. Getting it done. You can kind of see the water just go straight through the coils. All the dirty water coming out the bottom. One important part is cleaning off the base once it’s all finished. It just gets rid of all that stuff so it doesn’t get sucked back up into the unit when the units running. We had some pretty heavy fires and smoke in the area last year. Kind of right after we had cleaned the coils. Which was unfortunate but it’s just the way life goes. Things change. Things happen. But anyway a lot of the ash got dragged into the units. So just cleaning that all off so we have a good year. Than just clearing the bottom pan real good.
That’s the story on that. Makes for a much better year. That way we’re not up here when it hits one hundred and twenty seven degrees. Not on all the units. Maybe one here and there but that’s about it. Good to go. Nice and clean.
To make the procedure safer you can pull the disconnect and discharge the capacitor first. So tracing the conduit down. It’s coming to right here. There we go. See what’s going on here. Just going to go ahead and discharge the capacitor. Bridging the leads holding only the insulated portion of my screwdriver there.
http://Blog.KungFuMaintenance.Com
http://KungFuMaintenance.Com
Get The Kung Fu Maintenance E Book Here
How to check for proper A.C. charge with low tech thermometers by checking for a fifteen to twenty degree split between an in going and an outgoing register.
Checking AC what you are looking for is a fifteen to twenty degree split. So what you want is that fifteen to twenty degree split over a time span of twenty minutes. So you can see here it is 1:28 right now. So at 1:48 will be checking back and make sure we got our 15 to 20 degree split. Right here it’s at 60 degrees at an outgoing register and than come over here we’ll look at our intake register. Obviously I can use a new filter here but you can see it is about eighty degrees here.
So we can check this again in about 20 minutes and verify that we are holding that 15 to 20 degree split in the temperature difference from the intake register to our outtake register. These are just low tech thermometers here. Checking it in twenty minutes. It’s probably also helpful to see the temperature. We have got this set to 78 degrees. Here is our set temperature here. There is the temperature in the unit is eighty four degrees. So we can see the temperature difference over time here. This is saying it is 1:32 right now. Actually it is exactly right. My pager is saying the same thing here. You can see it there 1:32 alright. So give it about twenty minutes.
It’s been a little over the time. It’s been actually about thirty five thirty six minutes. Anyway I am still showing eighty here going in at the intake. At the thermostat the temperature has dropped to eighty from eighty four. I got cathedral ceilings here so there is a bit of space to cool down so it’s kind of understandable. As you can see this is a little bit under sixty so we are good here.
Kung Fu Maintenance bit of detective works diagnosis an air conditioner not cooling examines the evidence shows the proof of a bad contactor. Case closed.
OK. On this one what it turned out to be was a stuck contactor. Had twenty four volts on the side. Which it does right now. You can see the contactor’s sucked in and I’ll also show you on my volt meter here. Anytime you have an intermittent working air conditioner it is a good idea to suspect the contactor. Especially if you look at it.
You see I got 27 volts there. 24 volts but you know if the points are burned or anything going on there. Now I do have the 24 volts going to the side. So what I have is my insulated tool. I am only going to be touching the insulated portion to pull the lead off and you’ll see the contactor suck back out. If I touch it again it should draw it in and it didn’t but sometimes the thermostat has a five minute delay also. But anyway this contactor is intermittently sucking in. Only sometimes sucking in.
So let’s see if I touch it again and let me measure if we still have 24 volts. So going from one lead to the other and we still have the voltage but the contactor’s not sucking in. So that’s telling me the contactor is bad. So see I’ll even put it back on here. See how it should suck it in and it’s not sucking it in. Now see if I push it in manually. You can hear it. So we’re getting power but contactor is bad. So again just going to pull this and this is 24 volts. Just going to kind of position this one out of my way as well as pull off the other one to get ready for our new contactor. That’s the only portion that is going to have voltage. Since I’ve got the disconnect pulled and definitely discharge our capacitor. Just to make sure we have no power going through the system.
