Reply to Thread

only seen two of those plastic ones. they reminded me of hydraulic hoses, only lighter weight.

They made the compressor castings for the airtemp units a few miles up the road at the mount athos foundry near Lynchburg, Va. The place made castings for brakes and other auto parts until was shut down few yr ago.

Originally Posted by billygoat22

how about those plastic linesets? saw one about a month ago.......Really? I'd like to hear about that
or airtemp water cooled console units.......Seen a bunch of those

Thanks for the reply!

how about those plastic linesets? saw one about a month ago.

or airtemp water cooled console units.

Trane still makes aluminum coils today, they are still epoxied.

I see old round Carrier condensers with aluminum coils every day around here. Usually they leak at the rusty accumulator before the copper to aluminum joint fails. The bad ones must have failed long ago.

I still see precharged linesets in use, too.
What I haven't seen lately are corrugated linesets.

Well hey smarty pants (smarter than me) you are right on both accounts. I had a lot experiences with the old Carrier units with the aluminum coils and they were a royal PITA.

For anyone who doesn't know, Carrier in a cost saving move designed several different condenser models with aluminum circuiting in the coil, many of them were the "brushy" fin type - another questionable move. The piping inside the units was all copper and there were copper to aluminum junctions at the inlets and outlets of the coil. Most of them developed leaks aggravated by vibration that were nearly impossible to repair. The problem from a scientific standpoint is that it's very very difficult to achieve the strong covalent bonding needed during the brazing process except in the ideal clean room type conditions of a factory. Carrier "issued" kits that contained mild acids and special flux componds and even solder to help techs try to makes field repairs. It didn't really work. It turns out dirt and compressor mineral oil made it nearly impossible to properly clean and braze in the field. The units were discontinued although there were some that ran for decades without a hitch. I have one seen recently that is still working fine but that's unusual.

Lennox sold split systems for a long time dating back to 1960's that used a pre-determined length of 5/16" O.D. copper, usually 50 feet, as the restriction device, no accurater, no fixed orifice, no expansion valve. And the excess liquid line was coiled up and left in the attic or closet where the air handler/furnace was installed. If memory serves some of these old Lennox systems were R502. It actually worked very well. My parents had one in their 2000 sq ft home that lasted over 40 years before it was replaced and I actually came across a few in my days as a tech.

And while I was typing this I remembered another old system that I'd bet the majority of newer techs have never seen. It was a split system sold by Sears and Roebuck that consisted of an outside unit, an air handler and evap coil and precharged linesets. The lines and units had brass compression fittings that were screwed together with Crescent wrenchs or pliers and whammo, a homeowner could install his own system by himself. I have no idea who manufactured them but Sears sold a bundle of these. Of course you had have duct work and 220V and all that but that's when you called Bubba from down the street.

However, I learned something new becuase I didn't know Trane made models with aluminum condenser coils.

Congrats chillerout1 - you got it.

Hope you guys enjoyed reading this!
Have a great evening and a better tomorrow.
Robert

#1 carrier or trane aluminum to copper condenser coils #2 lennox ac they did several models 1 of which was for apartments it was a split system and when you opened condenser section about 20 feet of coiled cap tube was inside saw it up to 5 tons .other was split system and captube ran from condenser to ahu cant remember models tho but somewhere around house i have manual that covered up to 1980 models and what do you consider old?

pjh008, you are on the right track on #2

And I forgot to say in first post this stuff is pretty old, you don't see many of either of these systems left anymore.

Oh and a hint is they were produced by two different really big AC manufacturers.

#2 - cap tube system, #1 - ?

Brain Teasers - Does anybody know?

I thought this might be cool. I will describe two HVAC related things without too much detail. I wanted to see if anybody here has an idea of what they are? One should be fairly easy and the other a little more difficult. Old guys, bite your tongues for a bit and lets see if the younger ones can figure it out.

1. A situation that mostly occured outdoors where an attempt was made to join two dis-similar metals to handle high pressure. It was a colossal failure and cost the offending company millions.

2. A system that used no orifice or expansion valve but worked beautifully.