A/C condenser fan motor replaced and it popped

I recently had a tech do a spring maintenance and our AC was working fine. But then the condenser fan motor died. The tech tested various things and said it was the motor. Gave me a quote to replace the motor and capacitor. I researched and realized it was a fairly easy fix and I could do myself for 1/4 the cost. I bought a new motor from a local and reputable HVAC supply place. Bought a dual capacitor that matched the specs on new fan and on existing compressor. Hooked it all up and the fan ran for a few seconds before a pop was heard near the fan motor and stopped running. As far as I know it's wired correctly. Anyone have any ideas? Please tell me the new motor is not fried now!!!

Thx

 

Welcome to the forums.

It sounds like the motor has shorted.

In order for us to help you we'll need a few pictures of your wiring.
http://www.doityourself.com/forum/el...rt-images.html

Is the new motor three or four wires ?

 

What can cause a short? Faulty motor? bad wiring? If it is due to bad wiring, then I am out the money I spent for it.

It has five wires, two of which do not seem needed.

Has a ground wire of course, a black and red hooked to the hot, a brown hooked to the capacitor. I will try and upload pictures later as I do not have them.

And thanks for the welcome!

 

Brown wire on the left is from the fan motor attached to the "fan" on capacitor, the yellow wire on the top is from the thingy that all the other wires are hooked to (not the actual compressor) and attached to the "C" on the capacitor, and the lighter brown wire is straight from the compressor and attached to the "herm" on the capacitor.

It leaves a white and a brown w/ white stripe fro the fan motor not hooked to anything.

 

Brown with white stripe goes to the cap.

 

Brown with the white stripe hooked to the "C" on the capacitor??

And is it possible that the capacitor blew(i.e. is no no good) due to the popping noise?

I will hook up the other wire and try and when I get home. Thanks for the diagram.

 

Probably didn't hurt the cap. There should be a wiring diagram on the new motor, that you need to follow.

 

Grrrr.....I changed the wiring to I think what it should be. The fan now runs but slowly.

I ran the black and white wires to the terminal, the brown and brown/white stripe to the cap, green of course grounded and left the red wire free. I followed the wiring scheme but still runs slowly.

It's a wagner motor fyi.

 

Did the motor come with instructions for wiring it as a three wire motor ?

On those replacement fan motors I always get the capacitor required by it and connect it to the brown and brown/white wires. The remaining two are the hot wires and go directly to the contactor. The compressor remains on 1/2 of the dual cap.

 

The instructions have both the 3 wire and 4 wire details. But the motor has 5 wires. Brown, Brown/white, Black, White, Red (not including of course the green ground wire).

I think the motor is two speed but I do not know which wire is the higher speed. The instructions do not say.

I am wondering if the pop we heard when we first hooked it up shorted the high speed of the motor? Or maybe, by very bad luck, the motor is defective.

The new motor is 7.5 cfm. The old dual cap was 40/5. So I bought a new dual at 40/7.5.

 

I had to call a tech out to look at it. Essentially I wired wrong to begin with, there was a pop but this did not] fry the motor. The tech hooked up the fan to a single cap and kept the other stuff hooked to the other cap. He said these "replacement" motors (i.e. non OEM) seem to do better on separate caps - he was unsure why. But he reversed the wires for the direction and it worked. It's possible the popping noise caused by being wired wrong did something to the motor working in that direction which fortunately was not the right direction anyway. I am not happy that I spent $140 for that but at the same time I was not very far off in fixing myself and am happy I did not have to start all over again.

 

I agree 100%. I was never a fan of dual caps. When I replace a fan motor.... it gets its own new single cap.
Anyway.... you're back in business and didn't have to buy another motor.

 

Yes...I even tried doing this (using single cap for the fan) myself but didn't do the trick by itself. If only I had changed the direction of the fan. Who knew?!??!

BTW - thanks for the advice, diagram, etc. All very helpful.