Well, just showing up to this customer’s house because the system isn’t cooling. They say it’s blowing air. It’s just not blowing cold air. I just kicked the thermostat onto cooling and it’s this unit right here. It’s not doing anything. I’m gonna go ahead and open up this panel. Okay, I just got this panel off. And as you can see, this contactor is pulled in. So it is getting signal from the indoor unit telling it to kick on. It’s just not running. So next thing I’m gonna do is go ahead and check the power going into the unit, the Ma, the high voltage.
Okay, I got my meter set on volts. I got two leads. I’m gonna put one on that side and one on that side. Okay, and 244. So we got the right amount of voltage. Let’s go ahead and put it on the other end and make sure we got voltage going through this contactor. And we do not have any voltage going through this contactor. So I can see like the, it is pitted right there. So this contactor is bad. The contactor needs to be replaced. This capacitor looks pretty old, like it’s original. So I’m gonna go ahead and test it while I’m here. So I’m gonna just follow the main power back right here. And there’s this disconnect box. I’m gonna go ahead and pull the disconnect. Okay, I just pulled the disconnect. So this unit shouldn’t have any high voltage to it anymore, but I am gonna test it to confirm. I got my meter. I’m gonna use the NCV, which is non contact voltage. You just push this button and we got nothing. So this thing is dead. No power to it.
Next, I’m going to take my needle nose and I’m going to go terminal to terminal. Just go from common to herm and then common to fan just to confirm it’s discharged. These things hold power like a battery, so they can shock you. Not all the time, but it’s rare, but it can happen. I’m gonna go ahead and remember my wiring on this capacitor and then just pull them all off. Okay, this is a dual run capacitor, meaning there’s two capacitors in one is powering the fan motor, which is what spins the blade. And then the other one is powering the compressor, which is what pumps the refrigerant. So it’s gonna have two readings. One is 60 and one is 5. 60 is for the compressor, five is for the fan. There is no perfect capacitor, so they give you a plus or minus 6% right here. So it can be 6% of 60+ or minus or 6% of 5+ or minus. You can’t really read which ones, which the fan, the common or the herm, which is the hermetic compressor. So how you can always tell is the most terminals is always your common, the middle amount of terminals. As you can see, it’s 3. That’s always your Herm, which is your compressor. And then the fewest amount of terminals is your fan, which has only got one. So I’m gonna put one lead on my compressor and one lead on my common. And we’re looking for 60, but there is no perfect capacitor like we were saying. So it can be plus or minus 6%. And this thing is reading 58.2,58.3. So technically the compressor capacitor on this one is good. So let’s check the fan. I’m gonna go from common to fan. Okay, and we’re looking for five and we’re reading a 5.2. So the fan side is good. This capacitor is good. It’s within range. So I’m gonna hook it back up. I don’t really see any like real bad hot spots or anything on this control board. So I can’t really test the fan motor, I can’t test the compressor, I can’t test the refrigerant until we replace that contactor. So we have to replace that contactor.