We are in the middle of a heat wave so at first I did not take notice, but when the house did not cool below 80 I went outside to check the unit and noted that the fan was running backwards (not blowing out the top) and cannot understand how this could happen.

Can anyone shed some light on this ? I guess the easiest is to just replace the motor and the capacitor - but I think the fan motor was just replaced less than a year ago and it turns backwards just fine.

Any help would be greatly appreciated - this is crazy.

See if the motor has provisions for changing the rotation and if so give that a try. If not then a possible motor and capacitor replacement is needed. There was a post on here within the last week about the same thing.