Got a little busy this past weekend.

For months now, one of our outdoor units have been making intermittent screeching noises. It's quite far from the living spaces and wasn't actually bothering anyone so I thought it was something benign and didn't gave it much thought. Besides, the A/C was getting long in the tooth (12+ years) and I thought it was just something ageing machinery does.

But then a few days ago, the indoor unit started to shutdown after a few minutes and throw out an error.... with the Power LED blinking red.

Fearing the worst, I went out to look and discovered that the outdoor fan motor has seized up. My guess is that the system detected that the evaporator coil was overheating and it's what caused it to shutdown. I tried to rotate the fan by hand and it began to turn again, worse noises and all. But at least it was no longer shutting down.


Conceding that the temporary 'fix' wouldn't last, I removed the fan motor and disassembled it down to its rotor. I found that the aft bearing was all mangled up. While the front bearing was still technically ok, I decided to replace both.

Aft bearing:


Front bearing:


Went to a nearby bearing shop and bought a pair of SKF 6202-2RSH bearings:


Now, it runs and sounds brand new.... for its age.


All in, I spent less than P500.

Lesson learned is to not dismiss symptoms and abnormal operations, however benign, that can end up inconveniencing or costing you more later.