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Are you using a recovery/recharge machine, or just using gauges to refill a leaking system? I highly suggest just using the recovery and refilling machine, unless there's a leak wherein you should get the leak repaired. I mention this because if you're using the extractor then you want the mass (weight) value, not the volume. If you have a small leak and are using gauges to refill then the volume or mass doesn't matter cuz you're filling according to pressures.
PAG type is 46 (Synthetic oil)
guessing this also means about 14 oz of 134a refrigerant
It is pag 46 spec. full charge is 14.4oz or 410grams.
As exninja said you should use a recover machine so you can vacuum out the air. Also the oil fill depends on what kind of leak and what parts are replaced. a small leak you don't need to add any oil.
If you don't get the air out the ac system will operate very poorly, also if you overfill on oil it can damage the compressor.
If your system was open to atmosphere you can also run a vacuum pump I think for about an hour to remove the air and moisture.
The time required to remove moisture is dependent on how humid the environment is there and how good the pump is. Ours at work has taken up to 3 hours to remove enough moisture to get the ac system to work properly on a vett I had to fix after another tech replaced the engine and left the system open for like a week. Anything is better than not running a pump at all.
The time required to remove moisture is dependent on how humid the environment is there and how good the pump is. Ours at work has taken up to 3 hours to remove enough moisture to get the ac system to work properly on a vett I had to fix after another tech replaced the engine and left the system open for like a week. Anything is better than not running a pump at all.
Good to know. How do you determine how long is long enough?
The vacuum reading, honestly you need a micron gauge and know your local pressure that way you know you passed the boiling pressure of water. You wont be able to read inhg gauge accurately enough to see when you hit the boiling point or go past it. Somewhere in the range of 28.5 to 29.5 inhg or 7500-10000 microns. When your vacuuming the system the gauge will suddenly stop going down (27-28inhg), it will sit there until the rest of the moisture is pulled off, then it will start declining again when all the moisture is removed. At that point you start pulling off the remaining gasses in the system. The lower you go after removing the moisture the better but that is also considering your local pressure is 14.7 (sea level with zero humidity) Higher the pressure and humidity the lower you have to go to boil out the water, lower pressure/humidity means lower vacuum required.
all good info, thanks guys, so I finally got around to this, replaced, compressor, condenser, got it all back together, ran vacuum pump got -29.5 inhg, held it for 1 hour, then ran pump for another hour. all good. added in 14 oz total, 11 oz of refrigerant, 2 oz oil pag 46, 1 of dye and 1 oz of "stop leak". compressor comes on LP gauge reads 50, and HP pressure around 100-140. "air" coming from vents are not cold nor does it have the normal smell of ac systems. I proceeded in frustration to try to add a little bit more of straight refrigerant as system should have around 14 oz of refrigerant, but I ended up adding too much. almost 7 oz more. but as soon as I did, it turned very cold and smelled correctly. I know overcharging can damage the compressor, so what should I do now? is there a good accurate way to remove a little from the system, or do I need to completely vacuum out system again and start over?
Using the low-side pressure to guess your temperature when filling I'd guess you didn't fill it with as much refrigerant as you thought you did. The other possibility is that your compressor isn't working properly but I'd bet the former. Your compressor likely isn't as sensitive to refrigerant amounts as others, but I stand by my previous advice of using a machine. Otherwise you can use the gauge manifold and a pressure chart to see if your pressures are correct.
You def need to wait when adding refrigerant for the first time, it takes a bit for the system to get completely setup. I would of also skipped the leak seal and just put new seals on the ones you opened.
You're low side is reading high and high side relatively low assuming your ambient temperature is at least 80F or higher. Is your compressor clutch cycling on and off or does it come on and stay on? Use as a baseline. Don't get too caught up on the high side readings as in my experience they sometimes read in a higher range because of condenser lacking performance from the car sitting still and surrounded by heat soaked components. I have never seen them read too low though and would assume that is a sign of an issue in the system like the AC compressor isn't working properly. You should have a much bigger difference between low side and high side than you described above. To properly remove refrigerant from the system you need to use a recovery machine like Exninja mentioned. The fill ports on the AC system have Shrader valves which function the same as your typical tire valve stem. The reason your to use a recovery machine is because the refrigerant is bad for the environment.
If your system is overcharged but still functioning you should notice the compressor dragging on the engine harder when the clutch engages.
04-26-2019, 04:22 PM
