This is just and FYI in case you run into the same problem someday.

My story:
Last summer, my A/C unit quit working. I called the A/C repair guy to fix it and he wanted to charge me $600 for it (the A/C unit was out of warranty). It turns out the blower fan motor on the cooling unit was dead. I said fuck it, I'll fix it myself and only paid like $80 for the visit. Well, I got in touch with a friend of mine who works in maitenance of a large apartment complex. He told me he would hook me up with a used motor for free. When he got to the house, his motor had slightly different specs than mine. My originial motor was 1/4 HP and 825 RPMS. His was 1/3 HP and 1070 RPMS. He told that it wasn't a big deal to have a faster motor and that it would work just fine. I was uneasy about it but I figured that the faster the new motor pulls the hot air out, the better for the condenser. Well, the A/C unit started working again and I was a happy camper for saving a bunch of $$$$$.

Fast forward to this summer (which has been hotter than hell), and the A/C unit stop working again. I went out to the cooling unit and noticed that the blower motor was not working and it was very hot when touching it. Well, I concluded that the blower motor was shutting itself off because of an internal thermal switch. I called my buddy and he had no idea why the motor was getting too hot and turning itself off. He had me call a friend of his which has more experience with Air conditioning and when he heard my problem, he asked me if I had changed the blades when changing the motor. I said no, that we had used the same blades that the previous motor had. Well he said, the blades are made for a specific speed and the motor is going too fast and not getting the hot air out the way it should. The fix had worked for the previous summer because it wasn't nearly as hot outside as this year. So, I decided to buy a motor with the same specs as the original unit had, and voila, my A/C unit was fixed for good.

Moral of the story is that if your repair something like an A/C unit make sure to replace the parts with the same specs as the original ones and forget what your so called expert friends tell you.

 

Good to know.

 

So what's a motor cost?

 

Why didn't he give you his number in the first place?

 

$150. OEM. $250 if you want it to be GE like the first one.

 

We had our A/C go dead last year as well, when the summer wasn't so bad in Dallas. There's an HVAC company not three minutes from my house - phew. I was sweating bullets because we hadn't put ONE dime into the system since we bought the 20-year-old house in '98. Thankfully it was just the blower motor, and $316 later we were swimming in cold air again. This is where that emergency fund comes in handy, if you have one!

 

You could have matched up the motor you got for free with a new blade with a different pitch and gotten away with fixing it for like $10. Still though, not bad for fixing it yourself. Most people would never in a million years attempt that.

 

sure beats spending $600 to fix it