On Sep 23, 2:52*pm, arkland wrote:
On Sun, 18 Sep 2011 18:41:09 -0700, jamesgangnc wrote:
A bad connection can still
allow enough current to make a meter think it has 120vac. *As soon as
you put an actual load on the cicuit it will drop way down

What 'was' weird, was that, at first, before I called in the licensed
technician, I read off my Fluke 77 DMM 120 VAC on both the black and
white lead coming in ... but zero volts between them.

You should give that Fluke to someone that knows how to use
it. If you can't use it to figure out that 240V is not at the outside
unit, you should not be screwing around with it. End of story.
Taking parts out of a working AC without figuring out if it has
power is just plain stupid. The tech you had out is a crook.
But you are a fool to be working on something that you haven't
got a clue about.




Again, that was not what I expected (I had expected 220 VAC between
them), but, at that time, I wasn't sure how the wiring worked. (Now I
know better - and so should have, IMHO, the licensed technician).

Yeah, the tech should have. And so should you if you're gonna
start screwing around with it.





Then the licensed technician came in, and said the compressor was bad.
When I called the company to ask why then the fan wasn't also working,
they said the technician, "Matt", had tested the voltage to be "within
5%" and that he was sure it was the compressor that was bad.

I spent the next week or so tracking down compressors ... but about ten
days after the first measurement (after the circuit breaker had been
turned on and off perhaps a dozen or more times during the tests of the
compressor), the voltage changed!

It was then 120 vols at one wire, and only 25 volts AC at the other wire.
Across the two was about 85 volts. Weird!


What;s weird is someone screwing around with eqpt when
they are clueless.



I instantly knew now, that the problem had NOTHING to do with the AC; it
was all about the input voltage (and I'm embarrassed to say it took me
this long to figure something that simple out - but again - I had trusted
the LICENSED technician who said the voltage was "within 5%").

It's not about trusting someone else. It's about knowing what
you are doing. You think if you took you car to a service shop
they would say, well the last guy said the O2 sensor was OK,
so no need to look there?




Back at the circuit panel, the same 120v, 25 volts existed, until I
disconnected the wiring and then the one side went to zero.

When I replaced the 30/30amp ganged (two in the middle, two on the
outside) breaker, everything worked just fine.

Frightening to think you're inside the panel.



BTW, why would 25 volts exist on the circuit breaker output terminal when
the circuit breaker wires were connected, but zero volts on that line
when I pulled the wire out of the circuit breaker output terminal?