Just realized my approach to compressor diagnoses has been backward for 15 years

Had a chat with this older fella at the supply house Wednesday. He said I should check the run capacitor first before even touching my multimeter on a no-start call. I always went straight for resistance readings on the windings. That one swap changed my mind. He showed me a 5-2-1 can that saved him 20 minutes on a reach-in cooler last month. Has anyone else flipped their troubleshooting order and seen results?

2 comments

2 Comments

james921mo ago

Jumped straight to windings on a frozen condenser fan motor last winter, wasted an hour before I finally looked at the cap. Swapped it out and bam, running in two minutes. Now I always check that cap first, saves me a ton of headache on no-starts.

paulb981mo ago

Learn from @james92's mistake and always grab the cap tester first, honestly saves you tons of time.