Air conditioning need help

Oh boy a bunch of stuff to follow I guess you want to be feeling on the fat hoes the fat metal line there's a skinny one and a fat one The gray connector the gray covers on the fittings are marked h and l high and low you want to be charging on the low side the fat line when the air conditioning is running and the compressor is on the inverter type compressors in these cars are going to stay at about 30 PSI that's it so if your air is not what it used to be you might need a little shot of gas but it's not going to go over 30 PSI so best to have it vacuumed down and then charged back up by volume and or weight our cars hold like 1.4 oz of Freon whatever you're using so in mid cycle like you're in how do you know what's in there The pressure's and the gauges don't tell you that they just tell you that the compressor is pumping that much PSI on low and if you hook to the high side of the skinny tube it'd be around 2:40 or something maybe $250 on a 90° day. So it's tough to know where you are. Another way to do it is gas it up until the compressor almost chokes being overcharged and then back off one or two blasts out the high side and you'll be close not close enough for some of these guys but you'll be darn close on a car of this old is it worth spending two or $300 at the air conditioning shop or try and get in it close I don't know it's a personal problem.

 

don't you be feelin' the fat hoes now...

 

..wait until winter

 

You went to a an AC place? You paid them money to hook gauges up? Then they told you nothing?

AC systems do not need topping off. If its low it has a leak. Competent AC place if they find it low will inject a dye and find the leak. Don't be surprised if its the evap coil under the dash. In the meantime if its not cold stop using it till its fixed as its really hard on the compressor and could damage it. Around here just the leak test is $100.

Ecoil is Very common and very expensive fix. My evap coil was $1100 pre covid.

The G2 Prius has an excellent ac system. It should be freezing cold.

 

Actually ACs do leak over time there's a federal mandate of allowable leak in an AC system I couldn't tell you right off the top of my head what they are but they do exist because especially in a mobile environment a car bus truck it is very common for air conditioning systems to lose some gas per year per month whatever it is common so a lot of times in a 12 or 14-year-old vehicle you will notice the sight glass takes a little longer to clear or what have you and when you spend the three or $400 at the air conditioning shop and they get out all the fancy gauges in the scale and suck your system down and all of this a competent mechanic can tell you approximately what he took out and what's really supposed to be there. And our Toyota we hold about 1.34 lb of refrigerant. So when the guy pulls all the mess out and says you have 1.08 lb. You see there's some missing. I am just being loose with the math and possibly the terminology here but you get my point I know in home air conditioners there's stuff on the books of the allowable leakage etc etc it's talked about all the time I don't know all the particulars but these cooling gases do come out of their sealed systems.

 

First let me tell you that the proper way to do your AC is to evacuate, check for leaks and then charge it by weight (450g +-30].
Now the shortcut I did where you take a significant risk.

1. Weight your R134A can with the hose attachment before you start. (Example mine was 397 grams gross).
2. Start the car and set AC to low and fan to max with open doors.
3. Put a meat thermometer on the dash air vent.
4. On the low side port (next to the inverter) connect your R134A can.
5. Check the sight glass (next to the high port) for bubbles.
6. Charge slowly and check both the thermometer for getting lower temp and sight glass until bubbles disappear. If there is a pressure gauge check also check that you are under 36 psi but this is the third and less reliable check.
7. After bubbles disappear continue to charge another 100 grams. If temp on vent stops getting lower or goes up you are overcharging.
   
8. Disconnect and Weight the R134A (Example mine was 287 grams left so I added 110 grams total R134a.

Dash vent temp now is at 38 fahrenheit with outside temp 75 fahrenheit. Colder than my refrigerator which is 40 fahrenheit.

 

Yeah this is when we used to do that in the old days with pretty much no gauges and stuff circa 77 or so.

 

Yes with R12 that was cheaper than a can of beer.

 

Beercan cold Billy Bob Butt Crack I can hear that banjo playing on the porch of the Appalachian mountains

 

I knew the whole entire story when the sentence starts off with.

(“went to an ac place and the guy hooked a hose to the valve ”).

a singular hose only ?. This is where it turns from a story into a horror show.

I have a question did this AC specialty place use small cans of refrigerant individually to charge up the system by TOPPING IT OFF ?.

 

I'm bout 40 minutes away

 

Did you ever play in a movie with Burt Reynolds when you were young ?. Just joking .

 

No but in the mid-70s I lived in a little town in Georgia outside of Atlanta called Sandy springs and I owned the Pontiac body style equivalent of the GTO judge was kind of a sleeper car made for Mom's grocery getter and that car was set up with a 150 gallon stainless steel tank sitting under the back seat with a tube running alongside the gas filler neck which was behind the license plate with air shocks on it in the back and a big V8 engine this is before I cared about cars and I would drive this vehicle from Sandy springs down to dahlonega Georgia with the air shocks up and the back under seat tank would get loaded with moonshine mind you I'm 16 with a fresh driver's license and then I drive back to Sandy springs to a garage let the air shocks down and the moonshine would run out the tube in the back near the license plate into a holding tank and these people's garage and they would pay me $150 a run that was gold in those days and lots of fun never ever been encounter with the law never probably made 300 trips over the years. Lost my driver's license for 26 years for speeding and administrative issues with the DMV and still kept driving and had the lowest insurance rates with USAA in the country. 84 counts of driving while license revoked over those 26 or 28 years.

 

Jesus Christ sounds like we are brothers from a another mother from opposite ends of the genome DNA splice.
My younger days high school my Mustang with air shocks in the back jacked up I was running something in California it wasn’t liquid it more represented alfalfa Family but a little more kick to it .

and by 26 I already lost my license four times all speeding

 

Amazing you two are not locked up or dead... meanwhile in NYC....


I checked up on this guy. He is legit. Hourly may be $70 by now. If only he had a Prius c.

 

A Prius C with a trailer hitch and a large roof rack from a large van. Capable of holding 1200 pounds on the roof and towing 2000 pounds on the trailer. In carry 800 pounds plus of tools and equipment and supplies inside the car. And after 130,000 miles still have the original front brake pads in the streets and Hills of San Francisco.
Yep no stress test at all.

gets turned on at 7 AM allowed to idle all day long until 7 PM driving home finally gets turned off air conditioning on full blast from the day I left the dealership show room floor

 

I like to see because it's still using the NZ engine but I can't imagine running from 7:00 in the morning till 7:00 at night with the air conditioner on all day never turning the car off I mean I guess I can the one ends you'll do that but I wouldn't want to be the one running the car but I used to run Corollas like that back in '74 and 5 so I guess.

 

My sight glass looked like a snow storm in it. Good leak in the evap coil. Don't waste your time on a can you may damage the compressor $$$.

Just pay the $100 at a car ac place they'll leak check it and find the leak. If no leak they'll charge it up correctly. In LA now a car with no ac is undriveable. You got some record uncharted heat coming at you right now. .