Please excuse my lack of knowledge about all things mechanical/electrical, but here we go...

I was trimming around my rheem a/c unit with my weedeater and accidentally snagged a thin brown wire and gave it a REALLY hard yank. I stopped and gingerly checked to make sure it was still connected and it seemed to be, so I kept going. I did not realize until last night that my outside unit has stopped coming on when the thermostat kicked on.

Putting two and two together I went out and took the cover off to see if it wasn't siimply a matter of an obvious wire that I had yanked out of place.

I think I see what I did, but would like a little reassurance that I am not about to make a really big mess out of a small one:

The thin brown wire enters the unit and has some of the insulation removed to show red and white wires inside of the brown. The white wire is currently connected to a yellow wire (that is connected to some part of the unit that has most of the other wires in the unit running to it) but the red wire is connected to nothing. There is a brown wire hanging down from the same part of the unit that the yellow wire is connected to but it is not connected to anything at the other end.

IS the solution here simply to make the connection between the red and brown wires?

I realize this may sound like a brain-dead question but money is tight right now and I can't afford a service call or a more serious issue that I made worse.

Any insight is very much appreciated.

J

The red and white in the brown cable are the control wires from the thermostat that tell the outdoor unit to start. These are only 24 volts.

The yellow and brown wires in the unit are the wires that go to the contactor that will close and start the line voltage in the unit.

All you need to do is to connect the red and white to the yellow and brown, really does not matter which to which.

Check the brown cable for any other damage, these wires are small and can be easily broken in the cable. Make sure there is no exposed copper on any wire or splice.

When done, turn your tstat to cool and the outdoor unit should start.

Hooray!

That did it. Thanks for the explanation tkrussell, have a great day.