mikeschn wrote:Maybe if you asked the question, someone might have an idea...
Is it not blowing cold air, or what?
Mike...
I have an older, 05'ish duotherm AC unit and it quit working right after I had the 220 incident with the geni with the wrong plug installed by someone that borrowed it. It worked for a week afterward and then it started to cool less and less until now it don't cool at all.
I have thought all along it had a leak but everybody has said that the 220 burned the thing up. I never thought that was what was wrong but I have spent months on the internet trying this and that but it still is not cooling. I have played around with AC a little and am not totally dumb with regard to AC but am a little rusty.
I don't think the board is burned up because when I turn the unit on I hear the compressor try to start. When I first started to mess with it everybody told me to put a start kit on it. It has one already on it but they said change it anyway. so I bought one like the nut I am even though when I tested the start capacitor it did what it was supposed to do according to the trouble shooting book. I also checked the fan and run capacitor and it checked out also.
I checked the start up amp draw and when I would start the unit up it would run up to roughly 35 amps and I would hear the overload relay click and the amp draw would drop to 2.2 amps. the fan motor was running but the compressor would not start. After fooling around with this thing for days the more I messed with it the more it looked to me that the compressor rotor was locked. I remember in an early AC class the instructor had us build a bump start box just for that purpose. Of course that was years ago and that thing has long since made it's one way trip to the dump. Anyway, I decided to take matters in my own hands and try to get it freed up. I hooked up the start run wires up backward and cut the unit on and off several times and as I applied juice to the motor I would wack the head of the compressor with my hard rubber mallet. After several times of this the compressor finally freed up and now it starts and runs but it still will not cool. I had always thought the thing was just low on freon so I have now decided to try and recharge the thing so I can find the leak. I think I can tell where it may be leaking but it is not enough freon in it now to even get a reading on my sniffer.
My question in all of this is if anybody has ever done this....I know, I know everybody says just to get a new one and be done with it but I figured that it will be another year and a half before I will need this toy hauler so I may as well try and fix it in the meantime and then maybe put in a new one if we ever do start racing again. I can't see buying a new unit now and letting it sit for a couple years and have the same thing I have now. I like the idea of being able to service my own stuff because my AC guy is hard to find when it's 100 degrees and you never know when it may go out.
I was wondering where to get service valves and if anyone had pictures of a unit that they had installed valves on that they could share.
Other that that everything is just peachy.
by mx842 » Thu Sep 02, 2010 6:22 pm 
Anybody??