Walk-In Freezer Nightmare… Then I Found THIS

This video is brought to you in part by True Tech Tools. Quality tools, essential support. All right, this video is about that freezer over there. It's a total mess. But before I left, I finally found out the root cause of what was going on. So, you guys get started on that. I'm heading off to the next call. All right, so we got a walk-in freezer. It's not working correctly. So, let's check this out. See what's going on. It's been a slow week. Haven't had a lot of really good calls to record. So, we're just going to do this one here. And last time I said that, you guys seem to like the video. So, guess what? I guess uh you never grow old of seeing these uh walk-in coolers. I guess it's always great refresher type thing. Let's get started here. Check out the freezer. >> Yeah. Yeah. They noticed it at room 7:00 today. >> The owner and all his infinite wisdom decided to re shut it off. Just cut the power to it. cut it back on, which may be helping. But he said after he did that, he turned a giant thud. >> Yeah. You got a lot of ice going on in there. Is that normal? >> All this up top and over Yeah, that's actually pretty >> Yeah. >> Yeah. We I Me and my dad have been up there like a million separate times. It drips water. >> Nice. >> Yeah. It's horrible. So when the humidity is high, there's ice in here. Once the humidity drops, it looks perfect. >> So when it wasn't working, was it not running or what was it doing? >> So it was not running was what I was told when he went ahead and do the shut off. >> Okay. >> My concern was was that it was just in shutdown. >> Uh-huh. >> That it was just >> I wonder if it was in defrost. >> Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. That it was in >> How warm did it How warm did it get up to? It said it got up to 20. >> 20? >> Yeah. >> Does it usually get that warm when it does it? >> When it does defrost, uh, it depends on the day. There are days where it it's gotten pretty warm in there. Usually, anything above 15, I get pretty concerned about. >> Okay. I'll go up and check and see what the defrost is set for and see if it's uh acting up or what's going on. >> All right. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Honestly, traps are working great. The freezer up here was one that I did a video on installing a headmaster control on it. Yeah, this is the cooler. That's why that's newer. So, let's look at this defrost clock. I'm wondering, does it have a defrost termination switch problem? I mean, that would make sense. Take a look at our sight glass. See if it's empty. Looks like it's full. Foil. I can see through it. That's good. I don't know if you can see through it, but you can see light through it here. Might as well check the oil levels on the compressor. I see it flopping around. Let's check the temperature on our liquid line. See if it's hot or not. Just normal. Nothing more overly warm. That's good. Okay. Well, let's take a peek inside here in the electrical panel and see uh what that defrost clock set for. There it is. We got everything just kind of crammed in here, don't we? There's our defrost clock. It's set for 45 almost 47 minutes. That's always a great sign. Let's uh Man, oh man, I don't feel very good. I don't like that. Make our own mark here. Let's go ahead and watch it. I don't want to disturb it. So, let's uh let it see it track time here. It's like he said, it's coming down in temperature. Okay. Well, let's watch it for a minute. They have an X terminal here. Who knows if it doesn't work. Iced up as it is down there. Uh they know they got infiltration. I don't even know where you start at on this. I mean, we could go in there, replace the termination switch. I don't know why we're at 45. I mean, usually 30 35 is plenty, but continue watching it for a minute. See if that thing turns. All right, so the clock here is rotating. It is a little faster to go with the center one than it is the outside one. Um, it is rotating. Let's see what it does when we put it into a defrost here. And I've had time where they rotate fine, but then when they get to the binding spot here, they can act dumb. Let's watch and see whether she pumps down. See the delay we got going on down here on the conttors. This one's not pulling in yet. Compressors obviously still in that one there. I'm not sure what it does. There we go. So, that one pulled in. So, we are doing uh the heaters and she pumped down. My question is, is the defrost termination working correctly? I did double check the wires here on why it does come down here to a purple and it is connected. So, depending on whether or not it's connected down below, that would be possibly the thing we'd want to find out. You can jump it and uh it'll see if it works. The termination solenoid might be bad. Insulated uh leads here. This is dangerous. 230 volts could touch something and cause a short. We're going to take it to the X terminal and we're going to tap the in. There it goes. Kicked it out. So, the termination does work at the at the clock. So, we know the clock works. The question is, does the switch down below, which is what normally goes bad, does that possibly have a problem? So, I am going to go down there and see how that is installed. And that way we can uh I honestly for the price of them and the amount of time I'm going to waste just sitting around waiting for it to hit temperature when it was already warm, I think the smartest thing to do is just replace the termination and move on. We have solid sight glass. The coils clean on the condenser. The evaporator was clean down there when I looked at it. The liquid line isn't excessively hot. Those tell us whether or not the headmaster, if it has one, which I didn't even look, but yes, it's got one down there bottom left corner. Um, we know the headmaster is not bypassing, acting stupid that way. We know our low pressure switch works cuz it pumped down. We know that the conttors are energizing correctly. And we can see right now whether or not the strip heat is working. That could make it go forever. So, let's go ahead and turn on our meter here. 13 amps. 13 amps. See what the ground's got. Ground got anything. No amperage on ground. That's always a good little check to check. See whether or not you are shorting to ground. If you are, then you'd be pulling power through your ground. Let's go downstairs and look at that. I I'm leaning towards changing that. They wear out. They set inside that freezer and that temperature. Moisture gets into them. They pull themselves apart. So, let's get down there and make sure all the elements are working. Okay, everything's quiet in here now. You can actually hear something. So, we've got heat tape. Heat tape is working. Drain line's working. All your wiring comes in here. So, let's get some of this stuff out of the way. Um, another thing you can look at too, see all these water droplets on the ceiling here? That usually means you're hanging out in defrost for a while. You got a lot of heat buildup and um I hear the I hear the uh sizzle from the elements. Take a look here at the back here. So you can see we got nice clean clean spot and it should not take that long. We've got a little bit of frost on the lefth hand side. That's a new motor. Motors are all fairly newer. Got some wiggos. Defrost termination looks like it's there. There's N four and X is on the brown. The X X right here. If you look at it, it's kind of disconnected a little bit. It's cold up there. Well, she is melting quick. See a little bit of ice there on the bottom of that. I don't I don't know. It's not horrible looking. I don't know if it's been changed anytime lately. It's a 5708, I think. Or so. I mean, everything seems to be working. We don't have a bunch of ice build up um on the wires. I'm going to watch it for a little bit. It shouldn't take that much longer and it should trip. I don't know. I just don't like that clock. I would really feel better about it. I wonder if it's sticking in the middle. While you're waiting around, check your fan blades. See if the hubs are loose. See if your fan blades got any cracks in them. See if they're dirty. All things that uh you can stay productive. See where our thermostat is. It looks like about -5. That's not all bad. This should be fairly insulated above here. I mean, it's like an attic space. I don't know why it's in such uh turmoil here. Okay, we can see massive amounts of cold leaking through the bottom of the door down there. You can also see You can see that they have a heater it looks like on the door. It's actually freezing down again. It kicked out. You can see right there that it kicked out cuz you're cold. You're 18° on the one spot. You can see right where everything is at and where the heat was at before. These come in really handy. I mean, they're expensive, but yeah, it's I think everything's working just fine. I honestly do. I mean, the trans the uh actually, do we have heater elements still on? I have 150° there. What the crap? Yeah, I've got heat on that on that liquid line, but yet I still haveund some degree elements. I need to see if those elements are disconnected yet or not cuz man oh man, it sure seems like they're still freaking hotish. I mean, they're 150 some degrees. Okay, took a picture of that. Took a picture of that. Something's going on here that ain't quite right. I think our problem lies up there with our defrost section. Everything Everything down here seems to be working like it should. Yep. There it goes. That doesn't matter then if the defrost clock set that high. That's working like it should. That's great. Look at the heat down there on the bottom. See the camera? That's what's awesome about these. They got a crap ton of heat over here. You can see it in that corner. See in that corner right there. And you got some right there. Crap ton of it. There's 43 degrees coming through there. And then here, holy crap, we've got 43 degrees here on that coming across that. That's just asking for problems. They need a new cooler. It's just plain falling apart. The main contacttor is for for these strips. It's not pulled in. Now, this other one is two two pole here. I don't know what it does. I bet you those are the fans possibly, but actually they would be a good time delay. We can cheat a little bit. See what our amp draw is on that contactor. 1.3. That's definitely not strips. Yeah. 1.4 on that one. So, we know it's not that. So, they must just been residual heat left on them. But, we know the defrost termination works. The clock looks a little shoddy. I mean, you look at it. I mean, she's pretty loosey goosey here. I don't know if we really need 40 minutes. I don't like leaving it that high. I'm going to lower that down to at least maybe 35 or I'm going to take her down to 35ish area. That'll be a little safer. I don't like going stupid high like that. That's just asking for problems. Wired tight. Obviously, it's high voltage. Put your finger in there. Defrost clock could have been sticking. If it didn't terminate properly, say it works now, not the other. I don't think we're going to be out anything by doing it. Like I always say, don't make the decision. Let them make the decision. So went down there, told the guy, "Hey, this clock, it's working, but could be sticking. It's really older. What would you like to do? Do you want to leave it go, or do you want to do it?" I put the ball in their ballpark. So he said, "Yeah, do it." So cool. So got it right here. That's a 45-20. So the same thing as this one right here. Go ahead and copy exactly the same way they had it before. I'm going to put it into a defrost so that it pumps down cuz shutting it right off leaves the refrigerant setting there. Will it kill it immediately? No. But less damage you can do, the better. There we go. Now kill the power. There we go. So, we'll go ahead and get this thing wired up. Doesn't really matter. I mean, you I sometimes if it's a kitchen, I'll pick uh off times when they aren't going to be as busy. Some people put it right in while they're busy so that they don't notice it as much. I like to have it so it's when they're not busy. That way it's less likely to get compounded and worse. We'll snug these up. That way they don't fall out. Yeah, cuz I mean this thing's just barely, you know, hit the different spots. So, okay, just for try our death stick. Make sure that all legs are dead just in case. We'll do a picture of it. Believe it or not, if you yank your gizmo out of your thing, it actually matches that. You can unscrew these. Makes it a little easier. Okay. Oh boy. Yeah. Looking a little shoddy back here in the back. A little shoddy. Just a little shoddy. So, let's go ahead and mount this other turd up. That way it's easy to go like for like and not have to guess. I mean, it's an easy one. I don't think it's uh a bad thing every now and again, but that's the route we're going. Yeah, I would say when I first got permission to record again, that was the first video I made was right there on that one. That's what's crazy. Uh I don't know what the story was behind it. Basically, it wasn't outside rated and obviously the 2x4s aren't holding up real great, but everybody said something about it. It's like I didn't sell it. I don't know. We had a special deal on it. Maybe that was all they could get and they needed it immediately. And you know, a lot of times there's a reason for stuff that happens the way it happens. Then ends got a crap ton of things under it. Yeah. Look at all that stuff, man. It's a lot of crap. A little corroded looking, too. I don't like that. I think we're going to tie those together somehow. Yeah, I don't think we're taking too too many precautions here. That's just not feeling it, bro. Might just do ourselves a little WGO and then do a simple jumper. Of course, that's three wires. I think we can get two under one. There we go. Let's just do that. Get a couple of the yellowers. We go. Two of them turkeys. Makes it all fantastic. Look at that. All nice and gym dandy. Pull. Pull. No leak. Leak. Good deal. Usually fit one on the left and one on the right. Otherwise, sometimes I will go forward and backwards with it from the top and the back side. All fantastico. And let's just set this clock up for 11:00, 12:00, whatever we are now. And that way they can follow the pattern that they're used to, about the time that they're used to. So go about halfway between it. There you go. And let's give her the juice. The hell is making the noise? Uh, where's my fan? Where's my fan? Uh, here could be your problem. Thumb down. I'm putting her in a pump down. Okay. So, why did our fan not run? Did we finally catch what was going on? For the love of Pete. So, you got two ugly wires going across and coming down. It might be into the fan switch. Do we have a fan cycle switch? Doesn't appear to be one. They do have wires kind of janked over there. Wires here look like they are my two wires for my fan. Well, let's uh take a peek at that. Maybe we got a bad capacitor or something, man. Oh, man. I'll tell you what. Well, either way, they're getting that. And uh that fan motor that definitely would take her down and she would not get to temperature. Wires do come across kind of just dangle across everything, which is wonderful. Feel the motor. See if it's stupid hot. Yeah. Oh, she's hot. She's hot. All right. See how this capacitor is. Capacitor looks awfully wide. Yeah, it looks really wide. I might get lucky and don't have to like sell them a motor. I'd be okay with that. Uh yeah, she's kind of spontaneously combusted here. Look at this crap. You're not often that you see that. Holy crap. Holy crap. For a fan capacitor, not often you see it that flipping hot. Holy crap. Toss that in the old dumpster. Oh, Ted smackers. All right, let's grab a new one. Luckily, I've got like 50 different capacitors. Same same freaking one lasted that long. Man, that got so hot that it bowed the cover that holds that thing, which is crazy. Bearings feel good on it. I don't feel any shaky shake or anything like that. Then they expect you to jam these wires back down in there somehow because otherwise you pinch them between the metal, which is a freaking awesome design. Unless you can do it like this, which we can we can do that. Heck yes. Heck yes. There you go. Everything's fantastic now. Oh, look at that. Not overly pinched. kind of can bend them up just a little bit. There we go. That way we're not totally pinching the wires. And look at them. They run it through a solid piece of metal with no special grommet, just rounded edges. Kind of like my thing I did last week. A few people are like, "OH MY GOSH." AND I even talked about why I did what I did. I really don't like that. I wonder if there's a way that I could maybe like wire tie those or even tape them so they're not like hanging on it. I like that. Let's do that. Let's hang it off the pressure switch. And of course, I do have wire ties. Oh my gosh, check that out. It restockth. Of course, when it shakes, which would be fine, guys. Like, I got to figure out all the things that you're going to think negative about cuz that's what we do in this field is we run each other down as much as we possibly can cuz that's just whatever how we always seem to do it. But there we go. Bring it over to there. Bundle them together. Probably attach it to that tube so that it doesn't rub into it to the point where it breaks off. Tell you what, we will hook it to the other one there. That way it's not on the tube and everything will be fantastic. Or we can just cut it out and not show you at all and then you'd be like, "Oh, you did a good job." I don't think people think about that when they make their videos. Everybody and her brother is going to watch it. So if you really think you are the goat, which I don't say stupid like that, you damn well better know your really well cuz all you do, especially some of these people I see lately. That's why I don't push the Instagram crap. I like watching it, but I don't I don't advertise there because it doesn't pay There we go. So we're away from it. Away from it. There we go. Oh, there we go. Just in case those break, we'll tape these two together. Everything wiggles just fantastically. Is it going to go the correct direction? Clockwise. Oh, let's take it out of defrost. Oh, look at that. Strong enough to make it turn. And it made the whole thing turn. Great. I do not like that at all. That's not going to work very well. So, we're gonna have to restructure those wires. I wanted to tighten these up. Okay. Now, she don't move. And then I got to cross this. This is all smooth and round right here. I'm going to leave it like that. All right. There we go. Let's watch it now. When you kick it on, I went ahead and short cycled that bad boy. Look at that. Didn't yank that time. So, we're good. Good deal. Get this thing back together. There we go. Wonder how many times they strip these out. They are all stripped out. There we go. At least that panel won't fall off. All right, guys. There we go. All right, guys. That wraps this one up. I hope you enjoyed it. So wonderful. All right, guys. That wraps this one up. Hope you enjoyed the video. If you got any, start over. All right, guys. That wraps this one up. Hope you enjoyed the video. Till next time, don't forget to like, share, subscribe, and tell your grandma about it. Later. This is where I normally close my video out. 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