Burnt Motor

MSSI

Brand new $5000 top of the line Rheem system ran for about 8 hours and is now tripping the circut breaker. but only when I plug the (blower)motor in..Called the installer and he might show up tomorrow,, maybe.. Is there anything that could have been done wrong in installation that would cause the motor to fry like that?? I dont trust the installer to admit any wrong doing..I would think the system would fault out before it fried the Motor.. Does this happen right out of the box???

CE1

Here my experiance with hooking up anything new:
46% it is going to work fine.
46% chance that it will not work at all.
8% chance it will blow up or start smoking.

Looks like you hit the 8% chance.

It has to be under some kind of warnity so you should be OK, But stay on top of it and be quick to complain.

MSSI

Ever have any luck backcharging a manufacturer for t-shooting or service calls to a new unit???

MSSI

traced it back to burnt capacitor inside ecm motor......Are they going to try to weasle out of waranty coverage if a factory certified Rheem installer didnt do the installation??....I bought the equipment along with a charged a/c unit without a license.(from Rheem distributor) I paid a Carrier guy to do the install..

CE1

Yes they will try to weasel out of warranty coverage because a factory certified Rheem install didn't install it. As I said before "But stay on top of it and be quick to complain." Also try going back to where you bought the unit from, they are probably are going to be your best bet on getting this settled.

You might be able to fix this yourself and avoid a lot of hassle if it is just a capacitor or..... (explain in more detail the statement "traced it back to burnt capacitor inside ecm motor")

mdshunk

The ECM motor is a DC motor with an electronics pack inside it. That electronics package is programmed for each specific furnace, and contains the rectifiers. There is no capacitor, per se. I'm a little puzzled by that finding. I think that the tech meant to say that the electronics portion is burned out. That electronics portion is a replacement part, but the motor needs to have a few meter checks done on it to confirm that it will not take out a new electronics pack.

Those ECM motors are pretty neat, but they are pretty much only in furnaces. To an electrician, they would be described as a DC motor with the DC drive mounted as a preconfigured package on the motor. They have a special little hand held tool from GE that plugs right onto these motors to troubleshoot them.

MSSI

OK more specific...the round board inside the motor has a square white component that says .33uF i was assuming that was a type of capacitor. But it has 3 connections, and it is actually the trace between 2 of them on the board that is burned. I have no prob replacing that component but dont know what actually caused the burnt trace. I probably shouldnt mess with it until I find out what they are willing to cover for waranty..I will be very upset if the warranty becomes an issue.. Their Rheem installer wanted $19Kto do the install...SORRY I DONT PAY $2500/day LABOR for anyone. Who do these guys think they are? this aint the freakin Space Shuttle.
They should have been clear on the fact that a rheem guy had to do the install, when they sold me the unit.........