The internet is a great thing!

I fixed my outdoor home AC Compressor TWICE this summer because of solutions I found on the internet, AND the icing on the cake is that the compressor is barely over a year old! Brand spankin' new house. They builder wanted, are you ready, $6500 additional for AC. I got the only builder in existance that didn't include AC. I laughed at them when they questioned why I couldn't possibly want AC in my new home. I questioned how any builder could charge $6500 extra for an AC compressor and sleep well at night knowing that would be about $15,000 after after the house is payed off.

The point is, the local place that installed it did a good job, on everything except the wiring. I pretty much rewired the entire system this summer because of them thinking it was ok to use wirenuts that were exposed to the elements and corroded after a year.

And that 220 line thing? I wore gloves, turned off the house fuse AND power block on the outside, and I was still worried, so I can relate.
Nice.

 

Good job on re-wiring that compressor, Hummerguy. Best not to mess with that 220VAC, so you did the right things by flipping the breaker off AND disconnecting the block.

I have to do some similar troubleshooting and repair on some low voltage garden lighting. I won't have the same concerns being 12vdc, but expect I will find similar problems you did with corroded wire nuts and so on. I'm not jumping into it at this point b/c I'm not working, and soam not interested in running the lights and raising the electric bill needlessly. That can wait until I get back to work.


Like you and others here I do prettymuch everything I can on my own too, because I find (here in Michigan anyway) that its hard to find anyone I can trust to do a good job and not get ripped off in the process.

In that vein, I'll be bugging the readership hereat VolvoForumssometime in early December as I expect I am close to having toreplace the rotors and brake pads on my XC90 [8D] (and on my Grand Prix too...)

 

To Tech- I haven't been in the forum in a while, or I may have been able to offer
help too. I used to operate a laundromat and had to fix many different pieces of equipment (from 120v AC to 220v AC). You did all the right things and the internet sure
is a great source of info. Thanks to all of the other members who contributed. Just to
reinforce- ALWAYS disconnect power first and verify that it is off! Then you can usually
find out a lot with a volt/ohmeter.

 

Thanks for that. I am pretty much learning how to work on everything.

 

I just fixed the LCD on my POS laptop (SOTEC, a J@p@nese crap). This is a 2002 model. A brand-new LCD was $200, so I decided to open it up. The only thing it needed was the backlight tube (CCFL, which is nothing more than a fluorescent light whose diameter is about the size of a noodle of spaghetti. Removed the retiring tube that was giving this reddish effect on the display, soldered on the new tube and the display is back in service. The repair cost was approx $24 for a pair of CCFL tubes (I only needed one), including shipping. An on-line shop was the only place that carried CCFL.

I plan to keep this POS running for another 3 years.


JPN