does anyone know how to do ac refill ?, need help to do a refill as im hopping doing it myself to sv ave cash Options

[Tuga2112]

Hi Everyone.

firat of all, im a new member so if theres a guide for this already dont flame, im just not good with the search tool

i got a 6gen celica a few years ago and finally got it on the road a year ago. i have been a fairly frequent reader of the forum for "how to" guides in a few things.

unfortunately now i am unable to find what im looking for so i decided to finally join in to ask.
im planning to do a loong trip this year to the south, so i turned on the key and decided to check if the AC works.... well it doesnt. after a bit of research i found out the most likely reason why it doesnt work its because it needs a refill (its been at least 6 years since the last refill if not longer)

my local garage does it for 55 quid, i found a couple of videos on youtube that made it seem extremely easy to do the job myself but i dont know if its that simple for a 15 year old car....

so if you know anything that can help me just leave a reply and hopefully ill get the AC ready for the trip at a discount price

Cheers

[VavAlephVav]

I had noticed the need for this sort of instruction around here and had planned to make a how-to as soon as it warms up enough to spend some time taking pictures.
I know a lot more about refrigeration systems than I do about the rest of the car


in order to get a good charge going on you'll need a couple of special pieces of equipment , not to hard if you have a friend to borrow from or can find cheap at a pawn shop
but by the time you've spent the money on that It may be less to just have a shop do it. Yet I personally wouldn't trust your typical redneck at a local shop to really understand
how to do it right.

it may also depend on the way things are in your area, in my part of the country your mom could walk into a parts store and buy R134a and nobody would even care.
in other areas people actually want to see your certification. I have certifications for all other types of refrigeration systems but have not botherd with the automotive one.


either way for a quick explaining - if you can get a automotive refrigeration manifold , not just the little one hose thing that attaches to the bottle but the full setup with
the two gauges and three hoses and valves. you can get on from Oreilys for not a lot.
in order to pressure test the system it is best to use Nitrogen because it is dry with no moisture in it. you can get a small tank and a regulator maybe from a pawn shop and have
it refilled at a local welding gas supply. and you need the fitting to connect the typical 1/4" flare of the regulator to the 1/2" ACME fitting on the refrigerant manifold.
you pressurize it with nitrogen up to like 200 psi to be sure you don't have some big gaping hole.

even if you skip the pressure test you will need to aquire a Vacuum pump, which you can often find from a pawn shop, again you will need the adapter fitting to go from
1/4" flare to 1/2" acme fitting that will attach the vacuum pump to the center hose on the manifold. the other two hoses attach to the H and L ports on the car, they are
sized so they only fit H to the red hose, and L to the blue hose.

but pulling a vacuum is ESSENTIAL to actually getting the refrigerant to work like it is supposed to, you vacuum out all the air and moisture and then let the vacuum suck in the refrigerant.
so that the sealed system contains only Air and Moisture. then you measure in the specific amount of R134a for the car.

theres' a bit more to it, like I said I had planned to do a how to with pics as soon as all the glaciers thaw...
there are automotive specific machines to do the same thing, but they'll cost you way more money.

of course if you only need to do it once It's surely going to be cheaper to just have a shop do it (assuming they give a **** enough to do a proper vacuum, don't get me started)
but maybe if you have a small leak, and you need to redo the system each season, or you're doing work on the car and need to redo It more than once I could show you how to
do it with equipment that could cost less than $150 at a pawn shop.

if you just "fill it up" with the little goofy one hose contraption and don't pull a vacuum it just won't be very cold at all.