Ancient AC System Lives Again! Dead Condenser Fan Motor Repair

Added: 2026-06-02

[00:00:00]Okay, I am on my way to my last service call of the day with the [ __ ] Derek. [laughter] Um There was so much back and forth with this customer this morning.

[00:00:16]Um turned out we had the phone number for one customer with the address of one customer under the name of a different customer, but it's all for a customer we've never been to before, so somehow that got messed up really bad, but they were scheduled for 2:00. It's 2:27.

[00:00:38]The issue is no cooling, so hopefully Derek can figure it out.

[00:00:46]>> [music] >> Okay, so turning the unit on inside, check the filter, make sure that that was clean.

[00:00:56]Now, prop the door open cuz it's an apartment building, and I don't want to get locked out.

[00:01:07]I'm going to go around the house or around the building and figure out which unit it is.

[00:01:16]Turn it off.

[00:01:20]And back on.

[00:01:27]Yep.

[00:01:31]Yeah, I heard a unit turn off, but just be sure that it's the right one.

[00:01:40]Feel the heat pouring out cuz the fan wasn't running.

[00:01:57]You lowered the temperature?

[00:02:00]>> It's already hit the 70s, reading 72 in the room. It should turn on.

[00:02:08]I'll alert I'll alert.

[00:02:21]>> 2 C >> Should I turn it off and on again?

[00:02:24]>> Yeah, you can turn it off and then turn it back on.

[00:02:27]>> All right.

[00:02:28]I'll do that off and on for a second.

[00:02:30]All right, I just turned it on to cool.

[00:02:32]>> All right.

[00:02:34]It might take a minute then.

[00:02:36]>> Yeah.

[00:02:50]>> Is the fan running inside?

[00:02:53]>> No, yeah, I don't hear it running.

[00:02:55]>> All right, so probably a delay.

[00:03:00]>> Yeah, that's the one that's right here.

[00:03:02]>> All right.

[00:03:13]All Luxaire. Says 2 C, so this should be it.

[00:03:21]Ooh, that motor is stuck.

[00:03:37]>> Should it Should it be putting out cold air?

[00:03:39]>> Uh, some thermostats take longer than others.

[00:03:42]I already know what the problem is, though. If you want to come out, you can.

[00:03:46]>> All right, I'll come up.

[00:03:47]>> All right.

[00:03:51]So, I know the problem.

[00:03:53]But, let's see if Derek can figure out the problem here.

[00:03:59]Okay, so I can spin the motor by hand now.

[00:04:13]So, it runs.

[00:04:26]Let's see if the capacitors okay.

[00:04:29]Okay, here's the fan capacitor.

[00:04:33]Uh needle nose?

[00:04:41]Yeah.

[00:04:44]Let's see.

[00:04:51]>> Is the capacitor shorted?

[00:04:52]>> Yeah, capacitance.

[00:04:55]Did you get it?

[00:04:56]Yeah, you figured it out.

[00:05:03]4.46 rated for five, so capacitance is not really going to do much, but should be replaced.

[00:05:12]It's going to be a uh condenser fan motor.

[00:05:18]Let's 208 230 1075 quarter horsepower. And there it is. 1075 quarter horsepower. So, let's let the customer know.

[00:05:38]Okay, so I'm going to give him the pricing. He's going to make the repair.

[00:05:42]I advised them that my recommendation is system replacement due to the age.

[00:05:47]But, uh we'll see where our customer want to go.

[00:05:51]Okay, well, customer opted for repair.

[00:05:55]So, we're going to get it repaired.

[00:05:58]Look at that motor out of the truck, and uh hopefully comes out nicely. We'll see what happens.

[00:06:06]Okay, got a 45 over 7.5 cap cuz this takes 7.5.

[00:06:12]And we'll get that one swapped out so it's nice and neat in here.

[00:06:16]New fan motor.

[00:06:18]And Derek is taking out the old.

[00:06:22]Hopefully everything clears okay.

[00:06:26]Okay, Derek's trying to get the blade off that fan, which is not going to be fun.

[00:06:34]And let's see.

[00:06:37]I want to get this capacitor out of here.

[00:07:01]So, they're using this as common for the fan capacitor.

[00:07:07]Here is our herm wire, which that's going to get a new terminal cuz that's pulling out.

[00:07:14]Commons.

[00:07:15]Common.

[00:07:17]These look okay.

[00:07:20]Just going to tighten them.

[00:07:23]Yeah, let's replace this one.

[00:07:28]What are you grabbing?

[00:07:31]So, I have in uh truck Well, yeah, I mean you grab whatever for that, but in the truck I have what's called a fin puller.

[00:07:40]So, there's a Milwaukee There's a soft Milwaukee bag that's about this big.

[00:07:46]Zippers Yeah, zippers open. All the tools for moving fan blades and pulleys are in there. You can just bring that whole bag over here.

[00:07:57]It's like red and black Milwaukee soft bag.

[00:08:03]See if he figures that out.

[00:08:05]I think he will.

[00:08:11]Now, I only have these larger spade connectors, so I'm going to fold this wire over a couple times to make it thicker.

[00:08:25]Throw this micro tool.

[00:08:31]Put that on there nice and tight.

[00:08:38]And that's a nice solid spade connection, but it's not going to come disconnected.

[00:08:45]Put our capacitor. Then I got some band iron. You grab some screws.

[00:08:58]Got some screws.

[00:09:00]Let's see.

[00:09:12]And let's put a screw in right here where the old capacitor used to be.

[00:09:28]Then take our new capacitor, 45 over 7.5.

[00:09:41]Put it right in there.

[00:09:45]And screw that in right there.

[00:09:49]Then then cut it.

[00:09:55]Let's see.

[00:09:57]We'll do this screw so I can cut it a little bit closer.

[00:10:06]Now that capacitor is in there nice and good.

[00:10:10]We can take our common from our contactor and we can put it on common on our capacitor.

[00:10:16]Take our home herm which is going to our compressor and we can put that on herm on the capacitor.

[00:10:27]Uh or did I just mess that up? Is that common?

[00:10:32]Look at the wiring diagram.

[00:10:35]Yeah.

[00:10:37]Purple is common.

[00:10:48]Yellow is herm.

[00:10:53]Yeah, that's it.

[00:10:54]Have you used that before?

[00:10:56]>> I seen you use it a little while ago.

[00:10:58]>> You want me to show you?

[00:11:40]>> Oh, so you mount this onto this little [ __ ] This little And then you tighten it from the screws and then you tighten this so that it like messes up the screws.

[00:11:49]>> Yeah, so >> All right.

[00:11:51]>> You got it corroded or no?

[00:11:53]>> No, no.

[00:11:53]>> Okay.

[00:11:56]Usually if there's room you would clean this with scratchy paper, too, but there's not really much room.

[00:12:02]So you're going to loosen this all the way until it sits flat on that fan motor.

[00:12:08]See how it sits flat right there?

[00:12:10]And then you're going to tighten those, which I have the Allen key if you need or you could just use this, whatever.

[00:12:17]But you always want to make sure that you're not putting it into the hole that the screw goes into. So where is that screw?

[00:12:23]>> I put it in right here.

[00:12:25]>> Okay.

[00:12:27]So yeah, just right there.

[00:12:40]And I would do the other ones. Try this one closer to me.

[00:12:44]This fan puller looks like it might be shot.

[00:12:47]>> Do I have two in here?

[00:12:47]>> Yeah, I do have two in here.

[00:12:49]>> Yeah.

[00:12:49]>> Yeah, take that one off cuz that one is shot.

[00:12:52]>> Okay, yeah, the screws that I just took out >> Yeah, the screws are stripped out.

[00:12:56]I should have thrown it out. I don't know why I didn't.

[00:13:15]It looks something like that.

[00:13:18]There.

[00:13:27]And you want it to be pretty tight cuz you don't want it to slip.

[00:13:30]>> No, no, yeah. I'm just >> Tighten up the head on that.

[00:13:40]>> You're jumping it.

[00:13:41]>> No, the head on the Yeah.

[00:13:45]There you go.

[00:13:48]>> We'll come back to that.

[00:13:48]>> Don't do that one.

[00:13:50]They all get tightened as you tighten one. So, >> That's pretty tight.

[00:14:01]>> Do a little bit more on the other two.

[00:14:05]Okay, I'm going to do the next one.

[00:14:11]Hopefully it's centered.

[00:14:14]>> All right, this should be >> You can look on the inside to see if it's centered and it's pretty centered.

[00:14:19]Now, where's the other adjustable?

[00:14:25]So, you put one here and then you tighten that one.

[00:14:36]And hopefully it comes out.

[00:14:48]>> Yeah, I remember now. I remember that one something really >> See if it's lifting off.

[00:14:56]Looks like it's going.

[00:14:58]>> Yeah?

[00:14:59]>> I think so. Yeah, it is going.

[00:15:08]>> [music] >> So, the uh fan puller is slipping. It's just chewing away on the aluminum cuz of how uh seized it is. So, I'm going to try a trick that I saw on YouTube that I've done a couple times before where you take the hammer drill and you pound out the shaft with the the hammer setting.

[00:15:35]See what happens. I really hope that works.

[00:15:38]Let's see.

[00:15:50]It slipped.

[00:15:58]No, that's not going to work.

[00:15:59][ __ ] Maybe if I cut it.

[00:16:06]Can't even get to it to cut it.

[00:16:09]Ah, man.

[00:16:12]Okay, I just cut the blade off with the sawzall.

[00:16:15]Now, I'm going to try pound it out. Let's see.

[00:16:21]Oh, man.

[00:16:32]Yes.

[00:16:34]Okay, now that's done.

[00:16:38]The new motor is on.

[00:16:41]The fan blade.

[00:16:43]So, we're going to see how it looks uh we put it in.

[00:16:53]Okay, and it's a good idea to take a picture of the uh electric plate on the new motor just in case uh you can't see it well.

[00:17:00]But, um black and white are power and our common. We're not using red, that's for the low speed setting.

[00:17:08]And then [snorts] our capacitor wires are brown for our fan and white for our common. So, really you don't even need to hook up either these whites, you can pick one or the other. I'll just hook them both up anyway.

[00:17:20]Uh white being common on the capacitor.

[00:17:24]See, we could also pull this one out because it went to our old fan motor.

[00:17:30]Uh actually, so I'll just wire nut that as our common cuz our wires weren't long enough to reach.

[00:17:36]But, we could do a wire nut inside this compartment. That's fine. It's uh not exposed to the elements.

[00:17:43]Let me get this clean out.

[00:17:45]>> [panting] >> Okay, so this should be wired right. Uh brown is going to capacitor fan.

[00:17:53]White and capacitor common. So, the motor common and capacitor common are both going to common on a capacitor.

[00:18:02]Our red is capped off.

[00:18:04]And our black is going to our other side of our contactor.

[00:18:09]So, we can power it on to see if the rotation's right.

[00:18:17]Now.

[00:18:21]So, the rotation is backwards.

[00:18:23]Do you know how to change that?

[00:18:25]>> Don't you have to change these two?

[00:18:26]>> Yeah.

[00:18:37]Are you sure that's not how it was originally?

[00:18:39]>> No.

[00:18:40]>> Oh, okay.

[00:18:41]So, we wait for it to stop.

[00:18:43]>> Turn it off.

[00:18:43]>> Well, I want to wait for it to stop.

[00:18:48]Or I could stop it manually.

[00:18:50]>> Yeah, I'm going to do it.

[00:18:53]>> Now.

[00:18:58]Now we're pulling heat through.

[00:19:00]And the ultimate test is an amp draw.

[00:19:07]1.36, so we're well within range.

[00:19:20]Oh, what's going on here?

[00:19:24]Okay, so just neatening up uh the wiring, the cover, wire cover, and the wiring in here that I did.

[00:19:31]Make sure everything's nice and tight, and uh throw the cover back on, and that'll be uh it for this one.

[00:19:39]Um I don't know what happened to the outro that I recorded, but pretty straightforward, just replacing the condenser fan motor.

[00:19:47]I don't know how many of those Derek has been with me for. He said he saw me use the fan puller before.

[00:19:53]And uh he was able to figure it out.

[00:19:56]But um yeah, it's nice having Derek back.

[00:20:02]All of these apprentices that we've had, they all are terrible and nobody wants to learn, and none of them have common sense, and they don't care about any of the tools or equipment.

[00:20:13]But Derek was pretty good until he quit. But Mike took him back, which I'm happy about, cuz Derek Derek learned an insane amount from the day he started to the day that he ended up leaving.

[00:20:29]But um he retained all that information when he came back, and he could put things back in the truck where they belong.

[00:20:37]He knows what to get, he knows to bring the equipment in, get it ready to go, whatever it is, installs, repair.

[00:20:45]He's usually on point, so I'm glad that he's back uh cuz it makes my life easier, but I also want him to be uh a technician, cuz I think he could do it.

[00:20:58]He definitely can do it if he pushes himself.

[00:21:03]He was getting a little bit comfortable when he was here before he quit.

[00:21:07]But I think he saw that uh uh it was a good opportunity that uh he threw away.

[00:21:15]And now he's got it back, so hopefully he does well.

[00:21:18]And I'm excited to teach him because he he'll focus and try to learn. Sometimes he won't things don't always click, which they never click instantly for anybody. It takes time to figure it out, aside from knowing how to do it, but why you do it.

[00:21:37]Um eventually things will click. Once you explain it to him, once he gets it, once he's more hands-on with it, usually he gets it.

[00:21:45]But um yeah, that's it. Hopefully we'll have more videos recording with him, teaching him.

[00:21:53]Um like the video if you liked it. Comment any advice or criticisms or feedback.

[00:22:00]And subscribe. Thanks for watching.

[00:22:05]>> [music] [music]