do not check ac refrigerant charge using sight glass !!!

Here is my new prius C with a full new a/c charge and a vary low sight glass not filled with refrigerant. This is normal some times. I took video and post it on youtube its my first but is clear taken with my phone cam.

I will post photos using the Toyota factory tech scan tool on my Prius C 2012 it has a feature to test the refrigerant charge it cool and fast, it only took about 20 sec after pressing the button. Look at my photo album.

Before any shop tells you you need a a/c recharge or worse yet they tell you we need to ( TOP OFF YOUR FREON!!). Make sure you are at a shop that lives , eats and breaths hybrids for a living. View attachment 41128 View attachment 41129 View attachment 41129 View attachment 41129 View attachment 41129 It's a new future for a/c shops and techs no more old school, no more guessing. There are so many sensors and other electronic parts added to a/c on cars over the last 20 years and ten fold in the last 5 years no one can check every thing with there eyes and hands any more.
PS. after having 3M crystalline 90% installed on the front windshield and front doors and 70% on the rear doors and back glass the car cools down much faster and the battery cycles less at idle when sitting in the sun with the a/c on. When you drive and the sun strikes you in the face and chest or side and arms you no longer get that burning feeling on your skin and you can noticeably feel the black dash is cooler. That means your A/C compressor dose not have to work so hard so your engine dose not have to come on so often to recharge your battery.

 

this was after a hour of driving, and i'm not talking about empty just low or full. My sight glass was nearly empty with only about a 1/4 level of refrigerant at the bottom or the line, the dash was cool and the return suction line was cold as you can see in the video the suction line has condensation on it as it should. With some one with out knowledge of the new systems they will think this is low. I drove my car into 5 of my repair shops and one body shop that I know the owners and techs and showed them this. They all had the same response and said the same thing. Wow Toyota did not fill up your a/c all the way. It came like this from the factory?. They were all fooled. But I know this I been working on commercial and residential air conditioning and they had inverter electric scroll compressor for over 25 years now, its old tech but just new to cars . Oh yea you can have a full ac system and no cold air out the dash.

 

It's easy to see colorless if you have good eyes and have been doing this for your living over 30 years. I will add Tracerline Fluoro-Lite florescent dye part# TP-3840-0032 and shoot another video for you. Any way its not important what you see in the sight glass in all cases with today's new a/c electric inverter controlled compressors. I'm not saying it dose not help, its close and dose aid in diagnostic. I like the glass just to see if there is a burnt gray or black film coated on the inside of the glass to tell me if the a/c system was ran low on refrigerant for a extended period of time and the compressor was operating without cooling over heating braking down the oil and metal to metal contact or wearing down the tiny roller bearing at the ends of the shaft of the scroll compressor. Another good use for the sight glass if you have vary good near sight is you can see vary tiny PAG or MINERAL oil globalization stuck on the inside of the glass slowly moving with the refrigerant flow across the glass. This is from someone either adding the wrong oil or using a a/c machine or gauges on normal R134a cars with PAG oil then switching it to a electric hybrid car using Denso ND-11 oil this should never be done. PAG oil eats a the electrical insulation and later cause a short it wont happen fast but over a longer time frame, it's like a ticking time bomb and the customer will pay the price of a new compressor later.