Hi all, thanks for taking a look at this post.

A few weeks ago, we had our outdoor compressor fan stop running. So I got a new capacitor, and installed it. Only they didn't have the right one at the parts store, so they gave me two, one for the compressor, and one for the fan. The one for the fan, I was told, only has the brown wire (from the fan itself) connected to it.

Things worked fine for awhile, about a week and a half, then the fan stopped running mid-cycle. So I figured it was the fan itself, I pulled it off, and got a new one. At the parts store, 40 mins or more after removal, the fan was so hot that you still could not touch the body of it, the parts guy said this was further indication that the fan was bad.

That worked fine for two days, now it's overheating, and stopping mid cycle, and when I looked, I was surprised to see it was running the wrong direction. I am 90% sure that when we installed the new fan, it was going clockwise, and blowing air up and out of the unit as it's supposed to.

Now, it's going counter-clockwise, and pulling air in, which is probably causing it to overheat and stop.

I have heard that a bad capacitor can make the fan run backwards, but I thought that was limited to capacitors with more than one connection. This is a fan-only capacitor, and only has one wire hooked to it, so my thinking is that its not likely that's the case this time. Am I not understanding this right?

I know how to reverse the fan wires, but am hesitant to do this since I'm pretty sure it was turning the right way upon install. However, there is always that chance that in the heat out there I was not thinking straight and I got it wrong.

Anyone have any ideas?

Here is a link to a pic of the new setup

https://imgur.com/a/y45GlmD

 

Welcome to the forums.

Osmosis won't work here. Likewise a capacitor needs at least two wires on it.
You have one wire on the fan capacitor. That's like not having a cap there at all.
You need to add a jumper from the unused terminal to the COM terminal on the dual cap.

 

Ok, yeah I thought that was odd too, when they told me it only needed the brown fan wire on it. But I've been surprised before and don't really have a solid electrical knowledge - so I rolled with it

Thanks for the reply. I'll try that !

 

If your fan motor has a brown wire and a brown/white wire...... then those two wires belong on the cap.

 

Thanks again. The fan has a brown, white, and black.

So The other capacitor has a "herm", "fan", and "c" - I assume you're talking about "c" as the "common" ? Currently its got the red wire on it as well.

We can't use the "fan" on the other capacitor because it's for the wrong kind of fan.

Is that right?

 

Yes, the fan capacitor side of the dual capacitor is apparently not the correct value for the fan motor, which is why you needed the second capacitor. You will need to connect a new wire from the C terminal on the compressor (dual) capacitor to one of the terminals on the single capacitor. The Brown wire connects to the other terminal on the single capacitor.

 

Hi guys, just wanted to drop in and say that the above all worked for me. Thanks again!