Intermittent Problem Found...Almost By Mistake!

This customer complains that the air conditioning, not the heat, the air conditioning was cycling, it was short cycling on and off and on and off and on and on. So we just went in and turned it on, gonna watch it for a little while. Stay tuned. Man those O-rings go bad so fast. Just need to select the correct refrigerant at 32.9 degrees. We are running in cool right now. Considering the temperatures right now, that's not terrible. Let me uh, I'm gonna check superheat and subcooling. I should still have a decent sub-cooling. It's probably going to be hot. Out here it's 52 degrees and it's 72 inside and they want it colder. I know what you're thinking. Just open the window, right? Okay, I have 9.5 degrees sub-cooling. I hope y'all can see that. And I'm still getting 8.8 degrees superheat. I don't think I see anything with the pressures to make it short cycle. So I'm going to... kill the power and check motors and capacitors contactor all that good stuff now i know there was a screw in there and look at here i just arrived y'all see that let's see if i can get it from over here a drain right in the way i think the last time i was out here we put on this capacitor that contactor looks clean there are other things that can make it short cycle let's go ahead and check this capacitor specifically i'm thinking about the um If it has a float switch that could possibly do it. That motor, the condenser fan motor, made kind of a a little bit of a bang noise when we turned it off and it was noisy the last time we were out here. I'm checking for power. Either either leg to ground and I've got nothing. Shorten out to the fan, shorten out to the compressor. You can also short them to ground. I do that just as a additional precaution. Let's go ahead and check this. All right, I cannot. Okay, 70 and five is what that's supposed to be. I was fixing to say I can't see what it is. I just wasn't looking in the right spot. Turned that to microfarads. That one reads five, that is good. And this one, did y'all see that? That said 4.8. Man, I wish I knew where I bought this AMRAD. Oh, hold on a second, that's completely different. I got 67.6. Maybe I just wasn't making a good connection. That's not going to make it turn off and it might even be within the range. Plus ten percent minus five percent. So let's check it. If I can find my calculator. All right so take the rating and because the lower limit is minus five percent we're going to multiply that by 0.95 which subtracts that five percent. Seventy. times 0.95 all right that is my lower limit if it is above that that capacitor is good so look and that was 66 point something y'all are about to fall over there 67.6 so the capacitor is good let's check this motor up top that is the railer magnet y'all see me using yes it's in my store and i'll try to tag it on the video remember first of all it spins freely that's good I'm hearing just a little bit. No. What I'm doing is trying to shake it back and forth this way. If it moves that way and makes a little clunk, the bearings are bad. And it's not doing that. Get one of these sunk. My air handler in the attic. I have already turned off the cooling. It does have a float switch. First, I just want to see if there's any water. I think it's dry. Nope, I don't feel any water. I don't see a cover in here. I can't get to the... Can't hardly get to this. As it turns out, that is not a very good place for that disconnect. I just killed the power because I don't want to cause it to destroy this insulation. It may not be necessary for what I want to do. I just want to check this motor. I guess I could have killed the power right here. I'm doing that same thing with the bearings. Trying to rock the shaft back and forth. I think the bearings are good. Oh wow, I can't. Right now I'm just looking at those connections. I can barely see because this thing was not doesn't look like it was installed. The terminals should be coming out over here instead of over here. Looks like blue is on two and maybe white is on five. Because I don't have any room and I can't hardly see it I'm gonna leave it right there for right now. That right there that little grommet comes inside new evaporator coils so I know this coil has been replaced at least once. Right now I am not really seeing a reason why this thing would short cycle and it has been kind of cold in the nights. It's possible it happened during the heating mode. The customer says they like it really cold and there's no way they would have turned on the heat. I don't know. I need to catch it when it's happening. Whatever it was doing before it is not doing it right now. Okay when I plugged up the power it came on and then shut off. I think we may have found our problem. Let's look in here a little deeper. Okay. Everything looks well attached. See if I can see something. All right. I gotta find my impact. Here it is. So I'm in here. I'm going to jump down where you can see. Good way to put a light on this. I'm going to tighten up plugs all the way around and see if that helps. Wow. I got a lot of turns out of that one. Okay. Those are on loads. I think it's going to matter if I tighten those. Maybe a little bit. It's time to go up top and do this thing. Are y'all hearing that? I'm I'm hearing a snap. I think we found our problem. It is right here. I saw a tiny little bit of spark and I heard it. I'm trying to be very careful not to throw sparks. I have another disconnect in my van. Let's go ahead and offer him that. I think I found something. Well, first of all, your wife's not crazy. Okay. I mean, she might be crazy, but... Not with air conditioning, huh? I need to see your breaker box. It's right outside the garage. All right um what I found was the disconnect up there was not making a good connection and I think we need to reconnect yourself. Yes. Forgive me I got a uh a mess of tools so you're gonna have to hold on to mess as they say. You ever get on the river with this thing? Oh, yeah. It's about to go hunt for the next two and a half weeks in Florida. So I'm weird. You talking about gator? No, I hunt hogs. Okay. So I'm from the Florida panhandle, Panama City. So I'll go home for Thanksgiving, and it'll stay there all winter. And I'll go down to my parents' house, and I'll just run to the river with it. That's cool. And take my kids hunting hogs and deer and everything else. And then it'll sit. All summer until we leave for July it'll sit and then we'll go down to like Crystal River area and we'll do all the shallow creeks and all that stuff down there. Outside disconnect or upstairs disconnect? Upstairs. Which one you want that AC breaker? I think it's gonna be a big one that's a 30 we're looking for something like a 50 or 60 it might say heat. There is a breaker panel inside the house but I think it's up top left 60 amp that's it. Alright, I need to replace your disconnect. Okay, so the disconnect's bad. Yes, even though I tighten the connections, when I wiggle the wires, it will spark. Oh, no, no, let's get it changed out. And it'll cause the blower to stop. That's why the blower, I keep hearing it kicking on and off. That is it, that is it. Okay, so she wasn't crazy, she found it. Awesome possum, I like it. I've got that in my house on my computer. Yes, sir. Oh, right. That looks like my last disconnect and it looks just like the one he's got. Come on, let's do it. I want to look at this closely and see there's a tiny little bit of arcing right there. Maybe in a couple spots. I don't know if it's just scratching. That one little fork right there looks like it was arcing. This might be a good time to move this disconnect because as y'all can see this is not exactly a good spot for it. I might have something, a grommet or something to put in there. I brought some Romex connectors. It didn't give me a lot of wire to work with. There we go. All right there is a little grommet right here. Y'all hold on just a second. I didn't want to lose this little grommet right here. Oh my that looks like a half inch grommet. It might be. This is my power wire. If I had some more number six with me I could mount this right here but I used what I had. I mean I could mount it back here on this wood but I'm going to end up mounting it right here. I don't really see anything in there that would make me think it was shorting but we saw it So that doesn't look very healthy does it? I do notice though that the wire that was on that side is darkened like it got hot. You see the difference in color? This one looks copper color that one looks more black. So I think that was our problem. I'm gonna go ahead and pull this out see about knocking a hole right here. Okay I now have the because we have this breaker right That serves as a disconnect. And I've got a good mind to just eliminate that disconnect altogether and just use the breaker. That just seems to make most sense to me. It passes code, and I think that's what I'm going to do. They put that grounding lug in a place where I can just barely get to it, so I'm going to move that too. As you'll see, it is way up here. Let's see if I can get this out. Okay, now I can possibly get... That is crazy where that is. It sure would be nice if I could get on that. I cannot. I do have a few. Other things I can try. There we go. Okay now let's put this back in here. I can't see. Y'all hold on just a second. There we go. All good. I'll tell you what. Let's try to knock it through first. Let me find my hammer. Excuse my language. I need that other one now. Those little metal shards are hot. All right I'm gonna leave these screws right here. So uh makes it easy to tighten them. I'm gonna skin this back a little bit. That is good. These basically need to be the same length, so I'm going to cut this one right here. This is number six. The strippers on these only go up to number 10, so I have to be very careful. If y'all see me paying a lot of attention to my phone, I'm waiting on a phone call. I don't want to cut the copper underneath. It's basically cut. It's just not wanting to come off. There we go. Go ahead and mount our grounding screw. A self-tapper to do it though. Straight in the back. Alright, so that is now my ground lug. Much easier to get to. I didn't mean to shake y'all around like that. Just a little bit more. I'm going to move y'all where y'all can actually see what I'm doing. Tighten it up. There we go. Alright, so now I'm going to shove that back in the corner. I'm going to go ahead and tighten up. Tighten up these over here. Because I've got the insulation on the Romex. I don't want it to pull out. So I'm going to go ahead and tighten this up. That's enough. You don't want it too tight. Let me get that snug so it doesn't pull out any. Okay, that is snug. We'll tighten up again in just a second. Now let's tighten it up. We're good to go. I say we go turn the power on and see what happens. See what happens. That has to be a more secure way. There's no real reason for an extra disconnect if you've got a breaker right here. And we just eliminated a possible problem. I think we're good to go. I'm getting ready to put stuff up. I want to monitor this and listen to see if it slows down, stops, or anything like that. I still think we're good. Guys, as y'all can see behind me, it's starting to get dark. It is that time of year. It's not but about 6 o'clock, so I got home late. I normally don't work this late, but I had a real doozy of a call late today, and it made everything run behind. I hope you enjoyed the video. I did film something about Jobber that shows how easy it is for me to add picture notes and voice notes to a call and it I really like it because it helps me sometimes when people call I do a little bit of research before I call them back or before I schedule the call I like to look back and I can read the notes and see. I mean I can even add pictures of the house, I can add pictures of the model and serial numbers, pictures of the equipment. That way by the time I get there I am very familiar with that piece of equipment and I like that. If you like that idea there's a link for Jobber down in the description. There's my buddy over there. Y'all see him? He is thrilled to be outside. He's been locked up for so long because there's construction going on on the riverside. There's also a link For ACIQ, my favorite equipment to install. If y'all want to be an ACIQ dealer, use my link. It does help me out, and it doesn't cost you anything different. I hope you enjoyed the video. If you did, how about like and subscribe? Check out the store in the corner, and I'll catch you on the next one.