Crucial refrigerant charge on Prius just 1 ounce can make a big difference

Search this garage they have made many how to videos, but I think most are to help customers do simple repairs.
Hybrid Repair Specialists - Prius Repair - San Francisco - Luscious Garage
This is the best shop I know of and send my family and any one I know to go. When it comes to Prius you don’t want to go any were else.

I took serval videos on Prius dash removals for evaporator but it was so long ago before I ever thought to put them on YouTube. I can’t find them lost in 20+ years of photos and videos store in hard drives from old computers.

 

The physical process that would actually caused a locked up compressor especially if the compressor was located down low at the bottom of an engine compartment instead of sitting up high on top of an engine compartment.

Usually a compressor down low is located in an area or a few degrees warmer than the evaporator that is physically located inside and up higher.
as the outside temperature chills the compressor the gas located in the compressor and the refrigerant lines leading down to the compressor start getting to the dewpoint or the condensation point where the vapor refrigerant all starts turning into liquid and flowing to the lowest point.
As you chill just one location even if you only chilled the compressor all by itself and you managed to keep the rest of the system at a slightly higher temperature. The gas continuously flows to the coldest point condensing into a liquid. Then on start up when the clutch engages you have hydrostatic lock up something has to give. on old compressors with mechanical clutches by the time the clutch kicks in if you have your defrost turned on your engine is revving at high rpm‘s to warm up the engine this compounds the problem of an instant mechanical lock up and something snaps.

The principle is very simple to repeat in practice and study at home it’s something you did as a kid in science class in high school or college when studying thermodynamics and gas laws.
1: Take two refrigerant cylinders
2: One has example filled with 20 pounds of liquid refrigerant
3: place one refrigerant tank in a freezer if you have one of those large top lid freezers in your basement. Place the tank containing 20 pounds of liquid refrigerant on the outside of the freezer.
4: now connect a refrigerant hose between the two tanks on the vapor side not the liquid . For those of you who do not know refrigerant tanks come with two service valves one that is attached to the very top of the tank to pull off vapor refrigerant only the other has a straw that goes to the bottom of the tank to pull off liquid refrigerant only.
5: Open up both valves so the tanks are connected .
When you come back the next morning the tank that was sitting out in the garage will be empty depending on the temperature of your freezer between zero psi and maybe five or 10 psi .
The tank that is sitting inside the freezer will contain 20 pounds of refrigerant minus maybe 1 ounce or 2 ounces of vapor that is still located in the hose and the outside refrigerant tank sitting in the garage.

6: if you took this procedure one step further and used liquid nitrogen or even better yet liquid helium or hydrogen to cool the The tank in the freezer down to -320F to -452°F you will notice the tank sitting in the garage will pull into a vacuum.

using the freezer method this is what are used to transfer refrigerant between tank because ton process refrigerant by the ton not by the pounds. My refrigerant cylinders are 240 pounds each 125 pounds each about a dozen 50 pound cylinders and thirty one 30 pound cylinders. Using this method I do not have to monitor the equipment I never have any pumps or moving parts that we’re out never have to worry about defective monitoring circuit boards or solenoids malfunctioning or wearing out. I just hook up everything one day can walk away and come back the next day or even two or three days lever later and never have to worry about anything burning up blowing up breaking or leaking. I manufactured all my piping myself out of heavy weight copper and real silver brazing connections so everything will last longer than several generations of a human can even live.

 

Honda set up a whole slew of them with their scroll compressor that was mounted down low on the engine. The refrigerant in the oil would migrate backwards down to the lowest point even out here in sunny California shops made a lot of money replacing these compressors and flushing out systems.

As for stuck piston rings not possible if the system was clean and dry and dry is the major word that is important without any corrosion or oxidation to happen nothing will rust or oxidize. This is caused by shops who don’t know anything and don’t have knowledge by improper procedures introducing moisture when they do a top off or a re-charge on a customer system by not knowing things can cause the most damage.

Hydraulic. ( LOCK UP !!! ) any liquid substance put into a chamber like a cylinder piston cannot be compressed something has to break. This is what all this Hass to do with a compressor and lock up and breaking.

Compressors by themselves do not lock up and break some exterior force has to be applied to cause the situation. Locked up or burnt up compressors are just a symptom of another problem.

There are almost 0.9 % defective compressors. But there’s almost 99% defective technicians who think compressor that fail are defective.

Usually can always trace it back to either number one lack of maintenance allowing refrigerant level to drop or number to the shop or individual technician who did the last top off or recharge causing a failure later on down the road.

When we come across a customers car that has a failure the very first thing question the customer get the old invoices or repair orders from the last shops that performed any air conditioning service throughout the vehicles lifetime.

Before hooking up any equipment a refrigerant gas analyzer is always used to test the refrigerant for purity and often always find a percentage of air contamination after shops have performed a top off or recharge this is your first sign you know you’re not dealing with a qualified technician or shop who previously worked on the vehicle. Shops that do not own refrigerant analyzers do not belong in automotive trade therefore should be educated or eliminated like cockroaches in the kitchen.

Then perform a moisture contamination test to test for a high level of moisture which majority of vehicles fail after they’ve had a top off or recharge or open air work removal components. Once you have confirmed you have several percentage of air and moisture contamination usually when you start cutting open components or taking apart the burnt up compressors you will find rust on steel parts and oxidation on aluminum parts and that’s where you could get seized pistons and cylinders that sit all winter long. It comes back to the cockroaches in our automotive industry that contaminate customer systems when they perform those top off’s or re-charge because they don’t own refrigerant analyzers and there’s so many contaminated systems out there they just suck it into their machine contaminate the entire contents of the machine in there recycled refrigerant bottle and then like somebody with STDs they stick their hose into every car spreading their STDs to all the other car. This comes back to the cockroaches in our automotive industry that contaminate customer systems when they perform those top offs or recharges because they don’t own refrigerant analyzers and there’s so many contaminated systems out there they just suck it into their machine contaminate the entire contents of their machine in their recycled refrigerant bottle and then like somebody with STDs they stick their hoses into every car spreading their STDs to all the other cars.

Maybe and guessing why something locked up or broke is not good enough speculating out of imagination or making up stories to satisfy a customer or one person self. Knowing exactly why something fails and then preventing it from happening again so the customer is not being stuck with a high repair bill beside because somebody is uneducated who caused the problem in the first place.

So the “I don’t care “ it’s just a clear indication of not caring about the customer and the customers well-being and saving the customer from future high expensive air conditioning repair bills. The same goes with the customers engines, transmissions, hydraulic brake system, coolant system,. The majority of all these repeat failures in short lives are usually always trace back to the technicians who worked on them prior.

And that’s why because of the certain individuals that our automotive industry has such a bad name for being uneducated or lying or stealing. It makes the whole industry look bad and untrustworthy just so individuals can fill their own pockets with customers money. It’s the exact same thing as stealing.