A/C issue

Slip the belt off and try turning two things (with no power, no jumper, clutch released).

Can you easily turn the belt pulley part of the clutch by hand, leaving the center, clutch-plate part stationary? Smoothly, quietly? If not, the pulley bearing is toast, replace the clutch.

Can you easily turn the center, clutch-plate part by hand, leaving the belt pulley part stationary? Smoothly, quietly? If not, the compressor is toast, replace the compressor (and as much of the rest of the system as you can't flush all the debris out of).

 

Well, you'll want to obtain a compressor, and (at least) a receiver/dryer.

You could have a shop recover the refrigerant that's now in the system, and if you wanted to, do the dismounting of the old compressor and mounting of the new one yourself, which could save a bit of labor, but not really that much (it's a pretty simple four-bolt on-and-off), go back to the shop without reconnecting the lines yet (ends plugged off), let them run a flush machine and then finish the hookup, evacuate, and charge.

Or just let the shop do all of it, as the labor of r&r the compressor isn't that big a piece of the whole job, and you wouldn't be making two trips.

If there's no grinding noise when the clutch is released, you can just leave the A/C turned off while driving around until it's fixed. Or unplug the clutch magnet, or pull the relay out temporarily.

If it's noisy even with the clutch released, you can pick up the shorter belt for a Gen 2, and install it just around the crankshaft, idler, and water pump, until ready to complete the repair.

 

Maybe one of the A/C shop members will post with a better estimate.

I am not sure how they deal with the dryer while flushing. Maybe I would take the old element out, and just give them the new one in its package, to put in after pumping all the flush juice through....

 

If it is a burnt compressor then you replace the whole condenser. Highly highly recommend replacing the expansion valve. If money is issue and I don’t like telling anyone backyard DIY method of flushing lines to clean them out. You can either buy air conditioning solvent recommended . You are supposed to use dry nitrogen as your propellant your air supply but most likely you don’t have access to that then everybody does the horrible thing and uses shop air that also combines with lots of moisture. And then there’s the real low budget of course not recommended but works. 99% isopropyl alcohol. If I was stuck with very little money and no tools and I had to make something work this is what I would do. Go look at my photo album I have lots of detailed pictures of the inside of condensers inside of lines and receiver dryers showing you burn out contamination from a compressor. Then you might be able to rent a vacuum pump from when your local auto parts stores I know they do that in some states leave it on overnight don’t listen to the guys who say 30 minutes or only get it to 29 inches of vacuum in your case if using alcohol that absorbs a lot of moisture and shop air that has tons of water in it leave your vacuum pump on overnight.

 

Here are some videos I posted on YouTube here’s two of them on Prius

Second video is on performing a load test

 

Not a stupid question. One of the effects you want is not just getting "debris" out, but also air and moisture. Get the pressure low enough in there, and water's boiling temperature will fall below the ambient temperature, so it vaporizes. Depending on the ambient temperature, that has to be a very low pressure, down near the limits of what you can even get, except with a good quality and meticulously maintained vacuum pump. Working on a hotter day helps, as you don't have to drop the boiling temperature as much.

Even then, as you've rightly guessed, the water has vaporized, but there really isn't any flow to carry the last of the vapor over to the vacuum pump connection. You're just waiting for it to very slowly diffuse through the system and find its way out the pump.

There's an extra caution if you're pulling vacuum on a system that hasn't just been flushed, where you're counting on keeping existing oil in it. Then you have twin possibilities of not pulling a vacuum that's deep enough, or pulling one that's too deep. At a certain depth of vacuum, you'll also be able to boil away some of the oil. The oil is usually a mixture of components with different boiling points, so what that ends up doing is changing the composition of the oil.

If the system has all been flushed and you'll be adding new oil with the charge, after evacuating, then of course that's not a concern. Otherwise a good micron gauge is recommended to make sure you are pulling enough vacuum to collect the water, but not so much you're affecting the oil.

 

This is one of those cases when you were asking questions with so little understanding of what needs to be done I’m afraid to give you any answers or recommendations because you may misunderstand and do something wrong . I guess I need to make some videos on these subjects and procedures I just don’t have time because I’m always so busy from morning tonight every day for the last 30 years even pulling out my cell phone to take a video means I’m losing money and I may have to turn down a job because I wasted time making a video. But what I can recommend find several large manufacturers of air-conditioning flush go to their website and I’m very sure I remember seeing they produce small how to videos watch several of them by different manufacturers until you are confident you know what you’re doing .. like right now my only time to respond is well I’m in my car driving from one job to the next job as soon as I park both hands are on tools with no time to talk . A vacuum pump only removes air and a small amount of moisture some of the YouTube or’s in their videos tell you a vacuum pump removes moisture or all the moisture this is not true and since you do not have a good set of gauges you do not own a micron gauge and you do not know how to use one this is why I recommend somebody who is doing their own work to leave the vacuum pump on overnight and watch videos from vacuum pump manufacturers like yellow jacket and Appian

 

There is no possibility of boiling away the oil there’s no such thing as too deep of a vacuum .
If I had the oil on a boiling pot under a deep vacuum hundred microns 50 µm at the same time I raise the temperature to the oil to 300+ degrees yes then I would be distilling or you could use another term or word cracking like manufacturing gasoline by removing the lower pressure point distill and hydrocarbons from the oil . But now we’re getting into the laboratory and manufacturing and splitting up the molecules out of the oil to retrieve lighter distilled hydrocarbons .
But we are not in a laboratory we are working with cars that are at ambient temperatures using oil‘s that have a very high pressure point before they start distilling at higher temperatures .
That’s why I have a vacuum pump that is capable of pulling all the way down to 3 µm.
Don’t believe the Internet myth about vacuum and oil . Otherwise we will start having to read tea leaves, sacrificing virgins in a volcano , Study the innards of a sacrificed chicken, and read the stars and moon to make sure we pull our vacuum at the correct time so the gods are not angry. Did I forget to mention we have to inprison or execute the messenger that said the sun does not rotate around earth .

 

Here’s some videos from the manufacture is a vacuum pumps and other things dealing with vacuum and air-conditioning tools . Scan through their entire website for all their videos this is the same stuff my dad taught me over 40 years ago when I was a kid . This is the same stuff my dad learned when he was a young man from an older refrigeration guy who learned it when he was a young man so how far back are we going to go and why is the automotive technicians of today so ignorant.

BluVac Professional Digital Vacuum Gauge – AccuTools

This last link is a video I made showing different vacuum pumps and different methods when using a dedicated blue back pro micron gauge with no refrigerant manifold

Through these this brand manufactures you will have more than enough information to research about vacuum and micron gauges and pulling vacuum you could spend a week this is all very old information there was actually some very good books on vacuum that pertain to all this information that was written back in about 1959. This is all basic first semester education stuff if somebody actually took out the time to get a formal education instead of learning on customers cars and breaking things and screwing up and charging them for their mistakes that is not learning learning how to be a screwup and getting better by attrition.

 

I don't have a horse of my own on this track, so I'm content to supply a reference to page 33 of this presentation from a manufacturer of vacuum pumps and micron gauges, and step out of the way. If you're in a position to supply references showing that this manufacturer is talking tea leaves and volcano virgins, great, we'll have the info together in one thread.

I noticed in that video you made, in two places (1:05 and 1:58) you are treating a vacuum below 500 microns and above 200 as being ok for recharge. That would be not inconsistent with the presentation linked above, as they only warn of a possibility of degassing from the compressor oil below 200 microns.

 

If you’re talking about degassing in the reference of old stuck refrigerant mixed inside the old dirty oil that may also possibly have moisture in it and your degassing the old refrigerant and degassing moisture that is exactly what should be going on .
Or referring to degassing as in vapor rising or evaporating and removing refrigerant oil that is not taking place when you’re getting below 200 µm .
And when you’re dealing with low temperature refrigeration or lower temperature cryogenic refrigeration you must go below 200 µm so when you turn off and stabilize your well below 300 or 250 µm . Automotive systems are pretty forgiving below 500 is fine GM was actually pretty sloppy and wanted to make it easy on their tax so they even stated as High as 700 µm I guess it cuts down on their time and makes it more profitable to cheat a little.
Unfortunately when dealing with body shops they leave the line sets after removed unplug for many days even weeks completely saturating the refrigerant oil and air-conditioning system. You’re lucky if you could get it below 1000 µm because you’ll never boil out all the moisture even after doing dry nitrogen triple VAC and sweep. It’s just a chemical molecular make up of the PAG or ESTER oil makes it so attractive to bond on to the H2O molecules and not release them under normal vacuum procedures. That was the good thing about the old R12 and R22 refrigerant‘s they used mineral oil that was roughly 10,000 times less hydroscopic than ESTER or PAG oil.
And this is the purpose of a micron gauge you can actually read the moisture level and watch it boil off and level out to the point where you know you either have some or you don’t . That’s the purpose of a micron gauge. Gives you definitive data for pass or fail. Since my dad started my education using a micron gauge at the age of 12 experimenting on vacuum chambers for physics projects and then introduced me into refrigeration and air conditioning. I could go up to 100 technicians while they’re working on a car hand them a micron gauge and say here are use this. Probably 99 of them will say what is it what is it for and how do you use it. Maybe only one might know what it’s for but never used one. And that’s the problem with this trade.

 

Harbor freight strikes again