Need help with confirming findings for blower motor AO error on Hayward H400IDL(v1)

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k_lewis

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Feb 2, 2016
8
Los Angeles, Ca
Hello all- Long time lurker and now first time poster. I'm hoping someone with knowledge of these blower motors can help confirm my diagnosis of a bad motor or point out anything I may have missed.

I have an early 2003 Hayward H400IDL (not v2) and this unit has had little use over it's life- it is virtually new a far as actual use goes and it has been in a protected location in the desert. no rust etc. The previous homeowner installed it back in 2004 and never got it to work, I don;t know why. I ended up finding out the gas meter was way too small for the home and was not providing enough gas volume to the heater. I upgraded the gas meter and have had the heater operational and working fine until this past weekend. Heater just shut down and would not re-ignite. Would flash error AO after the initial purge period.

I opened up the unit to inspect the blower & vacuum switches, motor and control board according to the Hayward service manual and troubleshooting matrix.
Switches checked out ok. Control board checked out ok. Motor resistance checked out ok.

What happens is, when the unit starts up at call for heat the blower motor is spinning very slowly- about 1/3rd of it's normal operational speed (normally that blower motor is cranking like a jet engine!). There are no obstructions on the motor or squirrel cage. the motor and cage are spinning freely and smoothly, just very slowly- like it is stuck on a permanent very low speed setting.

So because of this the vacuum switch never engages and the heater does not attempt to ignite. The motor also gets very warm very fast.
I verified this by intentionally closing the vacuum switch circuit and the heater will then ignite and fire normally.

I tested voltage at the blower motor when powered up on call for heat and is on the pre-purge cycle - Motor white to red reads 220v. Motor white to black reads 110v
I tested resistance on the blower motor windings between white / red and white / black, and all were in spec
I tested voltage at transformer and it is putting out 26v AC
Checked all wiring connections and all are fine
I tested relay circuit at control board between L1 and IND LO. the relay is switching normally.
Vacuum and blower switches functional / normal.

Basically everything obvious checked out ok and the entire unit seems to be working with exception of the blower motor turning slow- but not from any obstruction. The only thing I'm thinking is the capacitors in the motor are bad and that is why it's spinning slowly- so I need to replace the motor to fix issue.

Does that sound correct as a diagnosis or am I missing something? I'm not sure if I'm supposed to be reading 220v at the motor on both white to red and also white to black. I get 220v white to red and 110v white to black at the motor.

It is Comair Rotron motor dated July 2003, Model A138-E03HJ, Part number 562015, 206-230v, 3200/3400 rpm

Thanks in advance if anyone can help.
 
If there are 3 wires going to the blower motor, red, black, white, then I suspect something is amis there. You should see 120 from black to white and red to white and 240 from red to black. At least according to conventional wiring codes. Verify that the motor should indeed be running on 240.
 
Thanks for the reply Dan- It is a typical 220v 4 wire motor from the looks of it. I don't think the motor wire colors totally match the uniform code use and hence my confusion.

220v input from breaker panel goes to interlock switch. output side of interlock switch wires are white and black for the 220v legs.
On motor, White is one leg of the 220v coming from the interlock switch, Red motor wire is (IND LO) from control board and black motor wire is (IND HI) from control board.
Other side of 220v leg comes from interlock switch (black wire) and goes to L1 on control board.
When call for heat occurs a relay on control board connects L1 to (IND LO) Red motor wire.
I have no idea what (IND HI) does from the control board and that is connected to the black motor wire.

So- White wire to motor is one side of 220v from interlock switch. Red wire is other side of 220v leg when L1 relay closes and connects to IND LO.
The black motor wire has 110v if I test across white to black wires. Seems white and red are the two 220v leg pairs which as you stated, is incorrect per typical wiring color code.

Unit itself is 220v and wired as such. It's been working fine until this past Friday. I've run though everything per the Hayward service manual for this unit. The only thing I don;t know is how the Hayward heater handles the low and hi motor speeds during the pre-purge and ignition process and what IND HI does with the black motor wire.

Seems to me like it could be a bad start / run capacitor in the motor itself but I'm not sure - available technical resources are sparse on this unit.
 
If you had an clamp on AMP meter you should check to see if the capacitor is operating correctly. If the motor doesn't seem to be spinning at the high speed, then it is probably the capacitor.
 
Thank you Paul- I just spoke with a tech on the commercial side of Hayward. We walked through all of the troubleshooting steps I did and that was his feeling as well. So off to order a new motor. caps in this old motor are buried inside the motor housing unfortunately.
 
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