Payne Condenser fan rotation

[riderman]

I was at a co-workers Mother's house today and walked by her AC condensing unit. It was an old round Payne unit. I noticed the airflow was down, not up and out through the top like I'm used to. They didnt say they had a cooling issue and I didnt volunteer any opinion. Is this normal operation for this unit?

I've seen this before on an old round AC condenser unit (I didnt notice the brand, but I know where it is located and can find out) My first thought was a miswire, now I'm not sure.

[dandyme]

you got a model #

don't sound right........

but, hey I wasn't there

[rbelisle1]

All right, I hope this makes everyone laugh like it does me.

Many many years ago, I had a house with an evap cooler only. The cooler was old old old and on its last legs. As a young man, I spent many years working with my grandfather who was an airconditioning repair man. In those days (early 1970's) it was not uncommon for him to remove a fan motor and have it either rewound or have new bearings put in the endcaps. I saw him do it millions of times.
So the motor on my evap went out. Of course, as a young man I was not rich by anymeans, so I took the motor to one of the last electric motor repair shops in Phoenix. I explained what I wanted to do and the guy behind the counter started to laugh. He said they had not replaced bearings in a small motor like that for 20 years. He took pitty on me and pointed me to a pile of small motor endcaps that were going to be recycled. He said, if you can find something that fits in there, its yours. Well, I did find two new endcaps and the bearings looked pretty good. I took them home and replaced the original endcaps and reinstalled the motor. I turned the evap on and little if any air came out of the supply ducts. I took the motor back out and figured it must be running slow, so off I went to the motor shop, in hopes that they had a tach that could tell me if the motor was slow. The guy at the shop humored me and put the tach on it. sure enough 1750 rpm. Then he asked the question that turned me beet red. "Is there any reason you have this motor running backwards???" Turns out I had put it all together wrong and the motor was running in reverse.
Moral of the story, check your rotation and dont be so cheap!!! on the other hand, the motor did run for a couple of more seasons!!!!

I certainly dont know if the unit in question here is made to run pushing the air through the condensor coils or if it should be pushing it, but mistakes do happen!!!!!

[D-Allen]

Could be someone put on the wrong fan blade.

[Willserve]

The Payne tear shaped condensers have a dome type fan grill. You don't feel the air out of the top but out of sides of grill. I think they did this to cut down on fan noise to make unit quieter.