Air conditioner stopped working

Wondering what happened? Sad tale. I got an appointment at the local Camping World in Golden for a diagnostic. They found that the electronic thermostat had died. Even though it still turned on the heat. Even though I tried reinstalling the old thermostat. So the new run and fan capacitors were fine. I was going to skip the diagnostic if I had gotten it to work. But since I didn’t fix it myself it cost me $650. They also did a 10 minute inspection that was not covered by insurance. The idea was to find anything else that I could claim. Naturally nothing. And excluding the service cost I probably didn’t hit the $500 deductable.
They found the high fan was wired to the neutral! I must have miswired when I reinstalled.
But I found the new repair shop in Golden to be quite nice. The new regional manager was there getting it up to speed and training new staff. I needed the new thermostat before I left for a trip this week. When it had not arrived by Friday he sent staff to another store to pick one up. Told me to come right in and they installed it correctly. They may be expensive but that was excellent service. While I was there I observed him handling other problems and training new staff and being an excellent customer care person. It was kind of obvious the existing staff was not used to going the extra mile. I hope he is successful changing that. Camping Workd needs a better reputation.

I could not figure out why the high wire doesn’t operate. There is no speed selector switch to test. The wires are plugged into the control board.

Unfortunately I think I blew the electronic compressor circuit on the expensive Bluetooth thermostat because when I hooked it back up the compressor would not stay on. I re-installed the original thermostat and it’s working. I didn’t hook up the hi fan since it sparks on application of power.
So it could be the wire or the control board I guess.
The impeller turns freely as does the fan blade but I noticed the impeller has a chip in it wher part of a fin is broken off. That seems weird.

It’s the high fan wire. It’s shorted out. I tested the thermostat and got a spark on the green wire. Took off the thermostat completely and got the same spark between the hot and hi fan. All the other functions work; low fan, compressor, and heat. Apparently auto hi and auto lo do nothing. I’m not sure why they cycle through. So sounds like I need to find the short! That does not seem like it’s going to be easy. On the other hand I could just tape it off. The air works fine on low cool. I found the only difference between the lo cool and hi cool is the fan speed. I hope I didn’t fry the thermostat when the green wire sparked!

Maybe. I checked that the thermostat wiring was secure but I probably need to put power directly to the hi fan wire.

That sounds like a thermostat issue.

I waited for the OEM run capacitor that came today. I installed it and a new fan capacitor. Now both work on low but not on high. Can’t find anything to explain that. Could the fan motor be broken?

That black capacitor you have will replace the big one with the yellow wire on it. According to the parts list it is a 40 uf capacitor and your 47 to 56 will certainly work.
11. All 1499-5721 Run Capacitor (40 Mfd/370V)
12. All 1499-5461 Fan Capacitor (7.5 Mfd/370V

Thanks! Hmm the parts list says it’s a run capacitor. Same thing? In some models there are three capacitors including start, run, and fan. This one only has two. I ordered the small black one before I looked in the compartment.
Turns out I can’t get a shop to look at it until July 19th. We are taking a trip to hot Indiana on July 27th.

The smaller capacitor with the brown wires is the Capacitor for the FAN. The other Capacitor is the START capacitor, the yellow wire. Get the info off the existing larger capacitor and go to a local AC supply house and get one. Also, Amazon may have them and Grainger will have them. Doug

Maybe the unit needs a hard start capacitor. But I understand that is just when the generator does not have enough power. The AC does not start even on a 30 amp outlet.

The run and fan capacitors are inexpensive. I'm reading about how to test a capacitor. Should I test the incoming voltage to be sure its getting enough power?