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one of my customers has one of those in the office in his drycleaner. He bought it at Grainger in the mid 80's. He asked me to check it, so I threw on the gauges and pressures were 90/500. (the highest R-22 pressures I had ever seen)

I cleaned the coil, oiled the fan motor, and changed some burned connections. pressures were now something like 75/350. The next week the compressor locked up.

It was the middle of a heatwave and he need cooling immediately so I dropped in an old 10 seer Tappan condenser I had laying around.

The new unit had a much bigger condenser coil than the old one, so I had to really overcharge it to get the pressure up so the cap tubes would feed properly. I pumped it down, cut a few inches off the cap tubes, recovered some r-22, and the pressures were now great.

Last year I asked him if he was ready to replace it with a Fujitsu and he just laughed and said its never worked so good and he hopes it will go another 20 years.

Vintage Mini-Split

A friend of mine has asked me to remove a small mini-split from a commercial building he has. The building opened in 1986, so I presume this is the age of the unit. The make is Heat Controller. It has an R-22 tag on it. There is a wall mounted evaporator about the size of a small microwave. It has a thermostat knob and four pushbuttons (off, fan, low cool, high cool) on the front. Air flows through the front mounted evap coil and out a louver on the top. I didn't get a good look at the condensing unit, but it is about the size of a medium sized microwave. There are quick connects on each end of the linesets.

Does anyone know anything about these units? I wonder what capacity it is? He says it won't run now, but that it was used in the last few years and worked fine.