Our central air conditioner is 20 or 25 years old. I can't remember for certain. about 5 years ago I had to replace the condenser cooling fan motor but other than that it has been quite trouble free. Friday before last the house seemed to be getting warm in the afternoon so I went out to check it. The circuit breaker was off so I reset it. The compressor took right off but the fan did not. I shut it down, removed the grill, and gave the fan a spin. It turned freely. I turned the power back on and gave the fan another shove. It didn't start but still spun freely. Power off again. The fan motor was too hot to touch so I feared the worst. I opened up the dog house and found capacitor oil all over everything. The fan motor capacitor had tossed its cookies. Luckily I had a match for it so I installed and turned on the breaker. Back in business.
When we woke up Monday morning the house seemed a little warm and muggy. Back outside I found the breaker was off and when I reset it the compressor just hummed instead of starting. The compressor capacitor had a bulge in its header so off to the supply house. New capacitor installed and AC back on. But something wasn't right. It just wasn't cooling. It had gotten pretty far behind on Monday so I didn't know until Tuesday. It went on that way slowly deteriorating. On Friday we called a repairman. Between placing the call and his arrival I found that turning off the thermostat didn't stop the unit outside. The capacitor oil had run down onto the contactor, which is located below both of them, and effectively glued it in the on position. My guess is the evaporator had iced up and couldn't clear even when the forced air blower was running. I had to pay the guy for replacing the contactor which I could have easily done myself but he was there by the time I figured out what was going on. That did a lot but the daytime temperatures were getting up higher than normal and the heat wave had broken, at least temporarily, so something still wasn't right. Deciding to do all of the easy things first I change the air filter. That did it. The filter was really plugged up and I guess it was just a coincidence that it got bad at that particular time. Anyway things are essentially back to normal. If changing the filter hadn't worked I was planning to open up the sheet metal and clean the evaporator fins. It has been 35 years since that was last done. To do that requires cutting through and removing some of the insulation, drilling out several pop rivets and removing the metal cover. Then the shop vac will be applied to the fins which probably need it. After cleaning the fins new pop rivets will have to be installed and the insulation put back and held in place with our old friend, duck tape. I'm going to put that off until the weather cools down some. The heat wave came back today, high of 98. I will have to do it before winter because the same air handler serves for heating and cooling. Regards. Max. K 4 O D S. Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Transistor site http://www.funwithtransistors.net Vacuum tube site: http://www.funwithtubes.net Music site: http://www.maxsmusicplace.com To subscribe to the fun with tubes group send an email to, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
