On May 4, 8:07*pm, "Stormin Mormon"
wrote:
That's the kind of ignorance that gets people hurt. "but I
thought...."

--
Christopher A. Young
Learn more about Jesus
*www.lds.org
.

"brassplyer" wrote in message

...
Replaced both the fan cap and compressor cap and it's
runnin' like a
champ now. The guy at the parts place put a meter on them
and said the
fan cap was on its way out and the compressor cap was kaput.
The shape
on the compressor cap is different - this one is oval, the
old one was
cylindrical about like an old car coil. However the ratings
are the
same and it appears to work.

Apparently it doesn't matter which side the connectors get
attached
to? I.e. there's not a "pos" and "neg"? It seems to be
running fine.

One thing that makes me curious - I noticed that even with
both the
breaker for the A/C compressor on the main panel and the
exterior
breaker at the compressor turned off, when I turned on the
air
handler, the compressor relay switch still activated. I
thought if the
breakers are off, it interrupted the circuit to the
compressor and
nothing should get to any part of the unit?

Thanks again.

Glad you got it running again. The run caps are usually cheap enough
that, even if you are not able to test, replacing them is worth a
shot. All you care about are the specs on it. Any shape will do.
Occasionally you have to fiddle around with the bracket to get it
bolted back to the chassis. Nice you found a supply house that was
helpful even though I suspect it was easy to tell you are a
homeowner. The hvac trade is extremely anti-diy.

You missed the breaker that the 24v transformer for the thermostat is
on. The air handler starts the outside unit with a 24v ac supply to
that contactor, aka relay. Unlike electrolytic capacitors these
capacitors are not polarized so there are no positive or negative
terminals. This is an ac circuit not dc. That board with the
flashing led is the defrost board. It's not involved in the operation
when you are using the unit in the cooling mode. Steady flashing
usually means it is ok. When there is something wrong it will flash a
signal where you can use the number of flashes to look up different
problems. There should be a couple pages of spec sheets in an
envelope inside the uinit and the flash code is often on those.

A few units will have a pressure switch that prevents the compressor
from starting up if the unit has lost the refrigerant. Don't know if
this one does or not, it's not all that common.