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A retired guy at the diner changed how I look at compressor failures
I was grabbing coffee near a job in Akron last Friday and this old timer, must have been doing HVAC since the 70s, asked what I was working on. Told him about a compressor I kept second guessing, and he said I should check the run capacitor under load before blaming the unit itself. He walked me through how a weak cap can mimic a bad compressor on start, and it hit different because I've swapped two compressors this summer that maybe just needed $18 caps. Anyone else ever been burned by that same trap, or do you always meter the cap first?
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murphy.tessa1mo ago
You trust the cap under load or just a static check?
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ray_williams1mo ago
Man that's a fair question, static checks never tell the whole story.
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jamie8041mo ago
Static checks are like judging a car by how it looks parked, you gotta see it climb a hill to really know. @ray_williams is right that they never tell the full story, but I've noticed the same thing with my kids' homework versus their tests. They can nail the practice problems at home, then freeze up when there's actual pressure on the line. Same with my old truck, it idles fine but starts sputtering the second I put any weight in the bed.
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