Tonight’s no-cool: 2-ton Goodman, fan humming, cap bulged like a muffin top, homeowner swears “it worked after I hosed it.” If folks rinsed the coil in April and swapped the filter more than “whenever,” I’d see fewer 45/5 µF funerals in July. What’s your favorite “I cleaned it” repair story?
My move after an ‘I hosed it’ is swap the 45/5, rinse the coil from the inside out, then check compressor/fan amps and voltage drop across the contactor so the new cap isn’t masking a high-amp or low-voltage issue… Favorite: homeowner pressure-washed the fins flat and wondered why head pressure spiked — cap season’s whack-a-mole, and I’ll only add a hard start if LRA is still ugly after it’s clean.
On the “it worked after I hosed it” jobs, I check C and HERM spades for heat discoloration and replace the terminals (loose spades are tiny toasters), then use a 440V cap even if the original was 370 so it runs cooler… Lots of repeat failures end up being a cooked connector or a mismatched fan run (5 µF thrown at a 7.5), so I always match the nameplate.