THE AC KEEPS TRIPPING THE BREAKER

i'm gonna use an impact but it's okay because i got that trigger control this video is brought to you by sportlin quality integrity and tradition um this is the restaurant where i had a restricted expansion valve and we ended up having to change the dryer too actually we had a restricted dryer and the expansion valve was gummed up um customer called and said the kitchen's still hot so i came here and the kitchen's 75 degrees the ac is working it's kicking butt but as i you know they were saying like oh man you know it's still not working and so i'm driving back out here i'm thinking okay the compressor failed or whatever no everything's running uh it doesn't i mean i haven't put gauges on anything but it's not restricted suction lines are cold uh every you know vital signs seem fine and it's nice and cool in the kitchen but in talking to the customer they said yeah and you know the dining room's hot and i said wait dining room something totally different this is the kitchen so they said yeah the dining room's hot too it's like okay well as i was walking up on the roof i noticed that this is their dining ac right here and i noticed that the main breaker downstairs is tripped for this ac so we need to open this guy up uh power it down up here and reset it and figure out why the main breaker would have tripped downstairs now why they're complaining about the kitchen ac i don't know you know i'll look and see so what i did was i powered down at the disconnect switch right there and then we're gonna go downstairs reset the breaker and then come up here and test everything come over here rtu 2 is tripped it's in the mid position so turn it on it doesn't do anything off then on um don't see any issues there we're going to check voltage we're going to do visuals before we turn everything on open everything out to ground nothing's jumping out at me electrically we look okay don't see any major shorts that i know of at the moment it's pretty big if it tripped a main breaker and didn't blow like a fuse or something so all right uh the power's off to the unit belt's snug no funky noises don't see any burnt anything wires nothing scary see how the filters are filters look relatively clean these are from the filter changer don't see any issues there huh okay i tested three phase at the disconnect switch it was correct 2083 phase so we're going to go over here grab our meter and start checking at these compressors this is an 18 ton so we got four compressors in it we're going to tone everything out make sure we don't have any direct shorts i'll show you what i find so i've tested every compressor to ground i get nothing i've tested the resistance across the pins on each compressor and they're all fine i get no direct shorts to ground on the load sides of the contactors i also don't get any direct shorts to ground on the line side of the incoming power i pulled the wires off of these capacitors and tested the capacitors while they were sitting here and i do have some capacitors that are bad three of them are actually measuring really low i'll show you right now uh 10 microfarad capacitor the first one is measuring 10.21 let's jump on to the next ones so on these capacitors it's uh let's see plus or minus six percent on this one so it's running 10.21 we're allowed to run 10.6 so that one's good this one's plus or minus 10 and it's running 7.5 so that one's low for sure 2.8 on the third one so that's definitely low and 8.1 on the third or fourth one so all three of these are low for sure but i don't quite know if that would cause me to trip a breaker i would expect that i would blow a fuse no those are 30 amp fuses i mean we tripped 150 amp breaker we're looking for something grander than just a bad run capacitor for a condenser fan motor for sure we're looking for a big boy problem hold the cover off of the contactors they certainly don't look great definitely kind of caked in there let's move on down the line yeah those look horrible i've seen worse but oh yeah those things are toast now that would definitely cause us to run high amps i still don't know about tripping 150 amp breaker but maybe depending on how low it's going how hot the compressor is getting okay we're gonna keep on going i'm just going to the common places on these guys and these blower motor wiring i've seen these rub out before no nothing so there's definitely been rubbing on the bottom of the unit right there but i don't see it's not messed with the jacket at all so the jackets don't look messed up huh well i've done about everything i can to make sure there's no direct shorts and i'm not seeing any so at this point um you know one last thing i need to check those fuses right there but at this point i'm ready to turn this on so i'm gonna check those fuses real quick okay fuses are good um let's fire this guy up hope nothing blows up sometimes you just gotta do everything you can to try to isolate find things can't find it flip it on and see what happens this guy should fire up into full cooling here test current draw see where it's running at indoor blower just kicked on it's taking too long i'm gonna put it in the test mode do it real quick we're waiting for the stupid thermostat interesting we're running 1.3 amps of current from just the board alone and the transformers all right so we're going to go c11 that's going to kick that's going to give us a heavy start because that's going to kick everything at once i'm going to step back when this pops on we go all four running 76 amps 78 amps he's cranking 80 compressors running really hard uh all but one condenser fan motor [Music] running is that oh that's this i was like why is it vibrating it's a stupid thing so condenser fan motor definitely not working 78 amps and this is a heavy heavy call this thing's running we're going to do some voltage drops across the contactors see what those are looking like so the fla on the blower is uh 15.7 and we're running actually i think it was higher than that what was it let's go over here verify evaporator motor 16.7 and then the compressors are all 14.7 so 16.7 on the blower which we were fine right at 15. let's test the compressors 11 so that's cool 10.7 11 12 13. that's kind of high that might be the one where the condenser family 14.3 okay so we need to get those condenser fan motors up and running oh that other one started finally but we're running high current on the compressor but it's it's running backwards actually so we're going to change those capacitors and see if we drop that current down and see if those compressors calm down when we do that too i just cleaned this condenser so it's not a dirty condenser so these two are amping on the high end but they might be part of those condenser fan motors that aren't working right so we're gonna go see if i got three caps in the van okay caps are changed out let's fire this guy back up again so we're gonna go to c11 full unit test wait till the decimal appears and back away all running 76 amps and i i was incorrect it's a 100 amp main breaker all condenser fan motors should be running right now this one's running now too we're going to test them test current on them find out i think it's 2.4 is what they can run so these are my motors right here the relays don't look good either the little ice cube relays and i can see that some of them are burnt so we're allowed to run 2.4 so 2.1 [Music] 1.66 1.7 1.8 so that one that's running 2.1 oh yeah 2.22 that says condenser fan motor number three that's the one that had a bad cap and it's running really it almost seems like it's running slow so we're gonna change that condenser fan motor my goodness gracious the heat coming out of that condenser right now uh is insane and i'm about to get a a rain cloud right now if you look over here we got thunderstorms coming as i was coming out here it was raining on me so that's my temp in the shade 107. let's see what it is out in the sun so it's about 114 in the sun it's like about 133 discharge air temp it's hot man this thing's moving air like i said i recently cleaned it i didn't i mean i took the side panels off and stuff so it's it's moving air but you know what man listen can you guys hear that it sounds like a dry bearing i'm getting like a dry bearing sound from this guy [Music] there it is there it is i think that's the indoor motor i think that's the indoor blower motor [Music] there it failing it's so hard to tell if it's the motor or that back bearing it's definitely the motor okay makes me feel a lot more comfortable you can hear it in there without the belt i was trying to figure out because the sound was resonating in the back but definitely definitely the motor this is what i'm talking about when i say you got to use your senses ditch the headphones when you're on the roof okay headphones have no place on a roof unless you're in like a mechanical room where you have to use them for hearing protection but up on the roof i'm just working on this unit and i'm listening and i can hear this weird sound you know and i didn't hear when i started it up but i'm starting to hear it just a little bit at a time and and it's this you know now this belt is too tight for my comfort as it is pulley's interestingly worn this one's really uh sharp on the edges too it's kind of weird i don't think it's a aligned properly the belt's kind of worn right here and it's really sharp but um yeah that guy's a little bit too tight so we're going to loosen this up too just to get us a little more life out of this yeah motor's really hot so we've got a dry bearing in that motor so i can see you guys aren't gonna be able to see in here but i pulled these grease ports off and there's grease in there but there's not very much it's rather dry i can see the shaft rotating so we're gonna put a little grease in there i'm still going to talk to them about replacing this motor but we're going to see if we can help them out a little bit these things don't have a port for grease it just has these little fittings right here that we're plugging it off but what i did was i took the zerk fitting out of the pillow block bearing temporarily put it on this guy just greased it until it started coming out the shaft just a little bit again this is this is just gonna get them by um probably not using the right grease either i don't even people always ask me what grease i use i just whatever the supply house has i really don't pay too close attention to that um so we're gonna grease this one up too but i wish i could show you guys the inside of that thing but it's completely dry you can just see remnants of grease since i got the grease gun i'm to go ahead and grease this bearing right here and that bearing right there the sheet has two bearings also when you're applying grease to these bearings into the motors you should be spinning it as you're applying grease and you don't want to over apply you don't want to you know just jam the thing full of grease i just basically lightly filled it up and that's it just slightly when it started pumping out the seal right there not even the seal but the shaft um just lightly though so and then we're gonna do this one and i'm gonna loosen this belt up and don't be that guy always clean off the grease when you're done make sure you get it all off that way there's not a massive amount of grease and then run inside the race of the bearing get the old grease out of there try to clean up after yourself as best as possible okay this guy's ready to go back in now it's a little looser than i'm comfortable with but it's better than it was everything's greased up we're gonna fire this guy up see if it calms down with that sound it was making still making it give it a second i could hear it from the outside of the unit that's a problem i've got it in test mode right now when the unit goes into test mode it powers down the unit but the indoor blower contactor still pulled in even when i take it out of test mode [Music] you should usually hear the unit completely stop and there's a number 50 error codes because i messed up the limit switch when i was pulling the blower assembly out so that should have shut off by now and it's not so there's something wrong with the m2 or m17 board i should say i don't know if this unit's going to be worth fixing with this customer they're probably going to want to replace it because if they're going to need a board contactors condenser fan motor indoor blower motor pulleys i'll bet you anything these guys will replace it and the crappy thing is they need to replace this unit this kitchen the one that had that compressor issue before they changed that all right we're gonna let it run for a bit see how it does you know what i'm wondering that's something to do with that limit switch in my head i'm trying to think if they will if you have a bad limit switch if they'll run the indoor blower motor as like a safety precaution i need to investigate that before i condemn that board yep that's what i thought it was uh i just jumped out the limit switch temporarily and now the blower shuts off so it's it's a function like a safety function in case the limit switch ever failed and heating it just automatically runs the blower even if it's in test mode so what i'm going to do is lock out the heating because we're not going to use the heating anytime soon and then we'll order that lemon switch when we come back so the m2 is not a problem are they prodded or that i'm sorry m1a board so all right i'm about done man i'm beat i've been drinking water like a fish i'm just dying it's hot um and it's humid out here for us it's probably like 30 or 40 humidity california that just kills us we don't know what humidity is here so i'm wearing a long sleeve an undershirt sweating like a pig um all right so that's all i can do for now i just bypassed the limit switch we'll uh i locked out the heating so that we won't turn on we're going to talk to the customer see what they want to do so indoor blower motor pulleys condenser fan motor contactors um i should put my gauges on it but i'm not really in the mood right now and uh this storm is about to be here so i need to get out of here it's raining already over here i can see it so as far as this unit i don't know what to tell them they said it was 86 in the kitchen yesterday 75 in the kitchen when i got here today and this thing's cranking no problems at all no restrictions i mean everything's cool with this guy so i don't know i'll tell him to keep an eye on that all right we're back today we've got a new indoor blower motor motor knitcha fan motor blade pulleys belt all that fancy stuff uh let's take a look at this kitchen ac that i was here on the one that had a plugged up filter dryer we don't have any active codes nothing new customer hasn't complained so hopefully all is good at this point we're gonna go ahead and get started on that dining room ac though the unit's running full call for cool and uh it looks like the uh the motor held up didn't trip the breaker anymore it's been a couple weeks since i was last here so greasing that thing up temporarily helped to get them through we're still going to go ahead and replace it though pulled it out for easier access and then i went ahead and put some uh penetrating oil on everything all in here while i start sanding everything up i also verified that the parts i have a pulley pulley and a bushing right there they're all the correct parts so we're good on that so we're just gonna get started on this i also powered down the unit and made sure we didn't have any power so we're good to go okay got some sandpaper here start by sanding everything up once we get it sanded up start disassembling loosening bushings and all that stuff work the sandpaper right you get these real thin strips you can actually turn the shaft with the sandpaper [Music] makes it nice same thing for this so i'm cleaning up the inside so i could potentially if i have to push the pulley onto it in fact you know what i don't need to take this one off because uh i've got a whole new motor so we're just going to get this one off all right so the bushing right here i pulled the screw or the the bolts that hold it together that sandwich it together and put them in the opposite holes so now we're going to push it apart and you're going to put even pressure on both sides and then it also looks like we might have a set screw in here that i need to pull out so we'll check that set screw real quick and then we'll uh start separating the pulleys yeah we're gonna apply even pressure so one quarter turn one quarter turn just keep going all the way around don't do it evenly though it'll pop off spot free right off so this motor hasn't been maintained and hasn't been greased for a very long time and that's mainly why i'm changing it because the bearings have basically overheated and potentially have damage now it's not making the whining noise anymore but it's been so long since it's been greased that it you know it's just time to replace some of these things this customer's so far out here that it's not worth it for me to try to grease it and come back and because the callbacks and the amount of labor that i would have to charge them is ridiculous so transformations got it yeah we need to set this guy where the other one was set so we find the old motor and i'm going to set it based on the old motor settings which is all the way closed we're going to start there so on this one you gotta pull this set screw then pull that key out and then you'll be able to adjust it and tighten it all the way okay now we want to go ahead and put a belt on so we can get a ballpark and it'll help us to do the alignment let's see how tight this is okay that's too tight so we're gonna go ahead and loosen it and then tighten it up i'm gonna use an impact but it's okay because i got that trigger control okay still loose now we can kind of set our depth yeah i'm just using an eyeball to get me in the ballpark keeping in mind that when we tighten this uh taper down or this uh bushing going to pull the whole pulley that way so we want to set our level ever so slightly in because when we tighten it it's actually going to pull the pulley onto it so that's pretty close now everything is finger tight when it comes to the set screws and everything we don't use an impact for any of this because we'll end up breaking everything okay now we're going to tighten evenly that's about it we make sure that we look straight looks good looks like we can go in just a little bit that looks dead perfect i like it a lot okay that guy's already torn down and then now we just need to tighten this set screw right here and there's a key already below it i can see the key so we're doing good this has been cut one too many times there we go okay so tighten loosen each time it'll go tighter looking good okay you want to make sure that this gap stays even when you're tightening it that will make everything crooked that one's at one and three quarters they're about even right now so we want to make sure we tighten them evenly that's good now i don't think that's even anymore that's right at two inches and that one's at two and an eight so we need to loosen this one up just in here two and a sixteenth two inches actually no that's two and two that's even make sure we're still tight like it's supposed to be looks good not over tighten i have got um all the contactors changed out and of course all the labels flipped back up indoor blower motors installed ready to be started up wired in [Music] aligned and everything so we're ready to fire that up and check phase rotation and continue on okay we're gonna fire this actually here's what we're gonna do so i can be careful about it we're gonna put the unit into test mode the shift unit test by doing that it won't run when i power it on okay here we go and then now we can check rotation so it looks like we have a call for fan and it's trying to start but test mode is locking it out okay so i'm gonna go ahead and take it out of test mode i'm gonna come on over here it's going the wrong way how did that happen oh i know how it happened yeah i'll have to uh reverse the rotation i lined it up line one line two line three but it must not be correct let's try this again [Music] let's see if we're going in the right direction [Applause] okay we're going in the right direction now we just got to make sure that we're not over amping so we're going to get in here and check current draw now all right yeah so with the new motor we're allowed to pull 13.8 amps so we need to go ahead and slow that thing down a little bit we're gonna have to power this guy down open up the pulley all right this motor is pulling too much current meaning that it's running too fast okay so what we're going to do is we're going to adjust the motor pulley so this is where i had it set right here was a half turn open we're going to open it two full turns to see if we can get it to drop so we're going to open the pulley so that's one half there's one there's two so we're gonna set it right there and then we're gonna see where that gets us all right we're gonna see where this guy fires up at now so 13.8 is what we're allowed to run much better i could even probably close it down a little bit but i'm probably just going to leave it there so long as the building's air balance isn't jacked up and i'll check it on my way out but we're going to leave it where it is i like to make it easy i'm generally a lazy person so take this off so i can access the motor right from the side instead of having to climb on top of the unit i can do all the work from right here all right everything is running much better i'm a happy camper and now it's actually moving air before it seemed like it was running really slow now we're really moving air so all right we're doing good we're gonna watch this thing operate for a little bit and start cleaning up all of our messes man where do you stop all of these relays were burnt too look at these when you're out here in the desert and you've got equipment that is just not maintained as good as it should be you know i'm reluctant to not change those relays because like i did because i don't want to be back it's frustrating all right hopefully that's it on this guy check the td it should be good but look at these uh contacts so they weren't horrendous but they're definitely starting to burn [Music] and man i don't know you guys probably can't see it but it is so smoky out here it's like starting i'm starting to get a stomachache i don't know if it's the heat or the smoke um but yeah every one of these contactors is like this just all pitted out beat down that's what the desert does to you it's been about two weeks since the last footage and uh when i finished up the motor install i did not have i had forgotten to bring up a limit switch to replace the limit switch that i had bypassed now mind you we don't remember i just got to reiterate this we don't bypass limit switches especially on heaters okay gas-fired appliances or anything like that anything where there could be a potential safety problems never bypass high pressure controls any of that stuff now when i bypass this limit switch i literally did it just to get the unit operational and i turned off the gas so that way it could not fire up i have a new limit switch right here we're gonna get this guy wired in i have power turned off and uh finish this job up but yeah no complaints from the customer um the ac has been working fine blowers good so when putting these limit switches in um they do this on purpose there is a connector that is really tiny compared to the normal size connectors okay you got to make sure you have those i keep these in my truck for this purpose it's so that way you hook them up correctly another thing too to clarify in the beginning of this video i showed that i thought the uh or i think i showed it at least when i when the limit switch broke all of a sudden um the blower motor started running and it was weird like you know something was funky there and it is a design of the unit that way if the limit switch fails they run the blower motor just to be sure that there's no potential of a fire in the unit it would be in my imagination so when i push this guy in i have it powered right now see the blower turned on so they do that on purpose for safety reasons i would assume okay i'm not the engineer that designed it but that makes sense in the case of this video i bypassed a heater limit switch okay you don't ever do that when you have an operating heater okay or gas-fired appliance never bypass a safety switch all right in this situation what i did was when i bypassed that safety i disengaged i completely disconnected the heating circuit so it could not potentially come on okay be very very careful about that stuff this was one of those things where it was just you know one thing after another and you know i'm so adamant about the wearing headphones when you're on the roof guys i would not have heard the bearing going bad it was an intermittent problem and i could not figure out why the breaker was tripping the customer said they or actually the customer didn't even know that it was tripped but um i couldn't find a reason and then i heard that sound and then it was like oh okay now i get a bunch of people asking me hey why don't i rebuild or replace the bearings in the motor it's not economically feasible basically the amount of time it would take in labor would far exceed the price of the motor so it's just as cheap to slap in a new motor but anyways we got the unit operational the customers happy still never had another problem with that kitchen ac i don't know what they were talking about that first time but yeah all was well so i really appreciate you guys making it to the end of the video on this one do me a favor um remember i do uh live streams monday evening 5 p.m pacific on youtube work permitting uh also go live on the hvac overtime channel on friday evenings with my buddies we do just kind of a good hangout show and uh if you guys are interested in supporting the channel there's a couple different ways you guys can do so you certainly don't have to i'm going to keep making these videos support or not but if you choose to do so you can support me via patreon there's links in the show notes of all my videos support me via youtube channel memberships merch available at hvacres.com you guys can get shirts and hats um and then true tech tools okay if you guys are considering purchasing any tools go to truetechtools.com use my offer code big picture one word and if you guys do know what tools you're looking for shoot me an email i'll generate an affiliate link it helps me out a bit more okay really really appreciate you guys and we will catch you on the next one okay

Channel: HVACR VIDEOS

Views: 356,581

Rating: 4.9325194 out of 5

Keywords: hvacrvideos, hvac videos, hvacr videos, refrigeration videos, the ac unit sounds like an earthquake, air conditioner, air conditioner noise, air conditioner not blowing cold air, how to, noisy ac compressor, lennox package unit troubleshooting, lennox, walk in cooler, walk in freezer, walk in cooler iced up, freon leak, hvac tools, hvac tools 2020, ac keeps tripping the breaker, fieldpiece sman 480v, fieldpiece vacuum pump, air conditioning, the ac keeps tripping the breaker

Id: bP3GwusUtok

Length: 35min 3sec (2103 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 24 2020