Question for HVAC guys...Lennox HS29-018-1P

[blue_goose]

Hey guys...


The fan on my AC unit croaked tonight......wasn't coming on..the blower in my furnace was going but the fan in the outside unit was not spinning....(is this the condenser? AC illiterate here). It was just making a buzzing noise and getting really warm...in fact started to make a burning smell...

Is this something as simple as replacement of the fan motor?

It has been acting up recently...as in I had to coax it into recognizing when I turned down the temp on my thermostat...

Tonight was the first night it started to buzz and get hot/burning smell. It's off now obviously.


Does the motor sound like the problem? Ballpark figure?


****I saw on You Tube that maybe a start capacitor? I'm again a burning smell was coming from unit and under top of unit where fan motor is located got REAL hot****

 

[SteveSRT8]

sounds simple but diagnosis is the key. The capacitor may be part of the reason the motor failed.

Exact same symptoms on our old Carrier system meant fan motor was bad, it actually was a very easy repair. But the motor was a bit pricey...

 

[Pop_Rivit]

It might be, but then again it might not. The only real way to diagnose it is with a properly trained, experienced and equipped professional. Anything you get here will be guesses and speculation.

 

[pb]

try coaxing the fan blades around when it tries to start.

 

[DBMaster]

Capacitors are cheap. The motor and capacitor are relatively easy to replace, but honestly, you should have someone with experience look at it. I work for Lennox and buy parts. I can go to the Lennox parts stores and buy parts at slightly above cost. My GF's condenser unit was not starting. I verified that there was voltage and that the contactor was working. I noticed that the start cap was leaking so I went ahead and replaced the start and run caps - for about $40. That did not fix it. She called out her guy, who is very good, and he determined that it was a shorted crankcase heater. That is very odd because her unit is NOT a heat pump. He said American Standard just includes them on a wide variety of compressors. He took the heater out of the circuit and voila, fixed. He did say that I was right to replace the capacitors, though.

Fan motors are expensive enough that I would want to know for sure that it's the motor/cap that's really bad.

 

[blue_goose]

Local HVAC company came out and replaced the dual capacitor....took all of 2 minutes and bam, cold air again. It was not as cheap as you could do it for. 194 total which includes their service charge but small price to pay to be back in the cold.

probably a lot less expensive than a fan motor to boot

 

[UNC017]

Dual caps make for nice packaging, but you just experienced the downside- you paid for a very large and relatively expensive compressor motor cap that hadn't failed, just to get the much smaller (and cheaper) fan motor cap at the same time... I've been known to piggyback an equivalent rated fan cap onto the half-failed dual cap on one of my AC systems once...

 

[DBMaster]

Originally Posted By: Blue_Goose
Local HVAC company came out and replaced the dual capacitor....took all of 2 minutes and bam, cold air again. It was not as cheap as you could do it for. 194 total which includes their service charge but small price to pay to be back in the cold.

probably a lot less expensive than a fan motor to boot


You would have paid over $100 for the motor alone. After the experience with my GF's unit I bought a capacitance tester so next tie around I can go at it more systematically. According to her A/C guy, who's been in the business 45 years, since caps started sourcing from China they replace a lot more of them.

 

[sleddriver]

Those are all signs of a bad capacitor. I recently checked mine and found all were out-of-spec and low. You need a capacitance meter to do this however. Rather than buy a chinese cap, I found a local electrical motor shop that sells caps made in the old GE factory in Mexico. These are higher quality and lower $$$ than those found at other places.

 

[DBMaster]

Lennox's First Choice product line is more or less "universal." It fits other brands. The products are motors, capacitors, and contactors. They are a higher grade of Chinese made products. I do hear from our store managers that the "Made in China" label puts some dealers off, but they also say that very few of them have reported any issues. Time will tell. The product line has been out for nearly four years.