hey guys welcome back to the channel so today i'm gonna take apart my compressor
and figure out what's wrong with it to see why it's been tripping breakers
every time it airs up and it warms up i've changed the capacitors on this a bunch of
times already and i'm probably on like my third run capacitor and then my second start capacitor
i'm going to take it apart again today and see what's going on so stay tuned
so before we start here's the compressor i have it's a 919 one six seven three one one thirty
gallon maximum six horsepower this thing was built in looks like 2003 so a lot of these compressors
from that era have the same issue that we're gonna deal with or trouble to try to troubleshoot
today so before we start i'll show you all the capacitors i've changed out in the past
so this one actually changed probably a year ago and i forgot if this was the run capacitor or the
start capacitor but is the one that came with it this is actually original one i've had this
compressor for 16 years i bought it back in like 2003 2004 and it's been a workhorse ever since
about 10 years ago it started acting up on me it kept on tripping breakers
so i found out online back then that a lot of the causes of that is their capacitors so the first
capacitors i changed that were these guys there were these 40 microfarad 370 volt ac capacitors
and this one these were the replacement ones i bought they were a little bit bigger than the one
that actually came with the compressor but they worked so i had to rig them with like some wires
so when we take it apart i'll show you what's in there this mallory capacitor is a 400 to 480 mfd
is that i think that's microfarad it's something ferris there's 165 volts ac
so this must be the start capacitor because it's a lower voltage and once it gets started then it
goes up to this guy which is the run capacitor which is a higher voltage once it gets running
yeah that's the original one and i actually found a replacement for this one a factory replacement
and that's the one i've replaced it with back when that one went out so we'll go ahead and
take it apart and see if how well those capacitors are doing now so to start we got to remove this
cover so it uses a little star bit it's a t20 star bit so we'll go ahead and take this out
so take this off you can see my little rig capacitor right here so since
this capacitor was a little bit bigger than the factory one it wouldn't fit inside the cover
so i actually just drilled two holes back here i zip tied it on then i extended the wires through
a hole that i drilled back here to rig it so it fits on here one of the things there was a
recall on this back cover on this compressor motor and the replacement one actually had
a bunch of vents through here i missed that recall back when they had it and then when
i tried to order it they didn't stock it anymore because it was obsolete so i just kind of did my
own thing i drilled a bunch of holes in here and i think i had to cut this uh for some other reason
before when i was doing the capacitor so the hole is already here but yeah i vented it so it
would get better airflow through there so the back cover is held on by two flat head screws
pop this thing off it's just a little tab that stays on top
my thing has been falling apart up here so all these this bunch of broken plastic pieces
we'll go ahead and remove the wires from here
you guys are worried about the potential on these capacitors you always just
discharge them by putting by shorting the two the two leads together up top
that drains the capacitors so just take a touch them both and that would discharge the capacitors
so looking inside this thing it's pretty simple device it's a motor the capacitors that start the
motor uh so you got so this is that replacement one i got for that other mallory it was a packard
one that i got a replacement with so it's got the same exact specs it fit perfectly in there like
it's supposed to on this one and this is where the other capacitor sat before and yeah you can see
where it burns out the first time right here with all the burn marks and that's when it died the
first time when i replaced it and then i ran those wires through here through that little hole that
created and i had to extend those wires the actual compressor itself is just this motor right here
it's got a little shaft and uh this is provides cooling right here with these little fins that
brings air in and then if you look in there there's a piston right there that spins this
is what compresses the air and it uh you know this is really the air compressor part of it where that
piston spins and then it sends air down to here into the tank right there and it goes into here
so this thing actually used to have a hard line between here and the switch and it that thing
broke on me too so i had to replace it with this little steel braided line here which is just a
line that i went down to lowe's in the plumbing department i just matched the threads and i
replaced it for like five bucks or something with this hose so that that's worked for like 10 or 12
years for me now i've actually taken this apart before too to diagnose uh what was going on when i
was tripping just to make sure all the contacts in there were fine i think that's working perfectly
fine because i took it apart greased it up and made sure but this is really the safety switch
and the pressure switch which is inside here so we'll go ahead and keep on disassembling this and
inspecting everything and seeing what's really go wrong with this so this thing also has a
little safety switch in here too on the back of the cover this thing actually presses against
this part right here which is the spinning shaft of the motor if this thing down here breaks or the
cap breaks for some reason this thing releases it and it stops the compressor so my problem
right now is it's not really that the compressor stops it's that it trips the breaker in the house
after it runs for a little bit and that's the problem i've been trying to tackle or
figure out for the longest time even after i replace these capacitors it usually runs for
a couple of weeks couple months without really any issues they'll charge up to like 150 psi just
sitting around for a while it'll start tripping breakers again on a cold start it'll run for like
five minutes or so you know trip the breakers but once it warms up or gets hot they'll start
tripping the breakers more often and usually i can't even get more than like a hundred psi charge
on it before it goes out and i haven't charged up to 150 psi in a long time either with this
so i inspected all this didn't really find anything uh loose or burnt or anything that
might suggest that there's something wrong on this back side i looked at this thing
i'm not sure what it is but it's some kind of either a controller or a sensor for the
motor or the winding or something i'm gonna take apart the other side now maybe take the
head off of the there and see if there's any issues with the compressor itself
so looking inside this thing there's really nothing that looks too damaged i mean i see
some scoring right here but it's a pretty basic piston and cylinder design i might just clean
this up maybe spray something in there to clean the walls up a little bit and clean this up
over here just because there's so much just dust and all this stuff that's built up over
the years from the painting and all that that's kind of sucked in here but i don't think that
would really affect the operation of the motor or the drag on this but i'll go ahead and try that
i'll take apart the pressure switch too and see if there's anything wrong with this thing
so it uses the same t20 torque as the other one did
so i've got the pressure safety switch out and everything looks fine in here i looked at the
contacts right here and it looks good it flips up and down properly there's no shorting or any kind
of burns or anything on that spot so the way this thing works is this is the pressure switch right
here so when it hits i think 150 psi there's a pin in here that presses out and then stops and it
hits a contact right back here it's kind of hard to see in this thing but there's a contact that
stops the voltage from flowing on the back here is deep inside there there's nothing wrong with that
and usually like yeah if if something's wrong with this it would be shorting out and causing
over current which trips your breaker so i'm just gonna put back together properly on this because
it it is kind of loose that now hopefully you know just playing with it might help
so one thing i'm going to try for shits and giggles i'm going to drill another hole or
i actually might just run two more wires through this existing hole into this capacitor capacitor's
got double pins so i can plug in the normal wires into and then i still have two other pens to
plug in so if you guys don't know i think uh capacitors in series actually work together
so you could do two capacitors in series in case one doesn't have enough juice or
it's broken then the other one will do the work so i'm gonna go ahead and try that
so i put this thing back together except that top bolt that where everything was crumbling it
actually started cracking the cover so hopefully that doesn't affect the operation because remember
that little pin switch or that safety switch that needs to get released when the motor starts
spinning i've seen some other guys online where they actually broke it too but they just created
a mount using an aluminum bar and a longer screw so i might have to end up doing that just cutting
a piece of aluminum just wide enough to fit out here on the edge and then getting a long screw
and just putting it in there that it creates a little sandwich a bracket that keeps the
you know the back of the cover tight against the motor probably a two inch screw to get it to fit
anyways i'm gonna try to start it up now see what it does uh well this is an empty tank
right now but usually when i've got air in the tank it'll trip the breaker right when i hit it
yep just tripped the breaker so that didn't really fix it uh i ran the compressor it hit 85 90 psi
and it tripped the breaker again so uh same old same old so i think something's fundamentally
wrong with this motor unfortunately trying to get a new motor these craftsman it might be worth more
just to go buy a harbor freight compressor with a new motor on it than it is to try to get one
of these uh replacement motors for the these craftsman because they're specialty motors so with
those specialty motors it's really hard to uh get a an affordable one so i might end up getting a
smaller harbor freight and maybe run these uh run this as a storage tank off of that and that way i
have a lot of air capacity but then just have the compressor you know only cycle less because of the
air capacity i'm going to try to see how far i can get it up now so ran it again got up to another
20 or 30 psi so i'm at like 130 right now and the breaker went off again yeah it didn't really help
redoing all this stuff so i don't know i might i might just need new capacitors i don't know i mean
that could be a solution to but i don't want to get new capacitors all the time and just have them
burn out hey guys thanks for watching all the way the end of this video so uh that troubleshooting
didn't go as i planned i guess without replacing those capacitors with brand new ones i can't
necessarily rule out those being bad but seeing as i just changed both of those a year ago i doubt
they went bad already if you have a compressor that's not even running at all and or starting
at all those two compressors are probably your biggest culprit at least it'll get us started
and it will get into the condition of where mine is where i can start it it runs it fills up but it
just overheats and trips the breakers and i think right now it's an overheating issue i can feel the
heat coming off the motor right now after running it up to 140 psi like i did just to test it but
yeah once i get up there and it runs for a while it does trip the breakers i think if i let it cool
down and i keep running it as i let it cool down it will fill back up and it'll run a lot longer
it's not very reliable if i had to paint something or i had to do something prolonged where i needed
this thing to cycle i wouldn't trust it but for the occasional use that i use it for it's
perfectly fine so anyways if you guys found this video useful which it might not be useful
but if you did at least learning about the capacitors and and taking the motor apart and
figuring that out then give the video a thumbs up if you haven't subscribed to your channel already
subscribe to the channel i do a lot of diy stuff around the house
on my cars i've got a bunch of product cars if you see any of my other videos
but anyways thanks for watching guys and i'll talk to you next time you