if you're embarrassed about your car because every time you turn on your a/c
fire blows out the vents maybe you're even losing some friends or something
out of the deal well I'll tell you what stay tuned because we're going to try to
fix it
so today I'm going to show you how to refill that AC system in your car so
what you need is a good set of gauges you need a scale here I have a scale
recycler and vacuum pump it's all built-in but if you don't have a full
unit most people won't you just gonna need a scale and a vacuum pump and then
also you need whatever you're gonna put in it so there's a refrigerant we're
gonna use some people use the cans maybe I'll talk briefly about that
full disclosure if you don't feel comfortable doing this please don't do
it today is quite hot there it is it's 32 degrees centigrade so I'll throw up
the Fahrenheit too but for those that don't know the high side of an AC system
can approach 300 psi on a hot day so very very important you don't want to
get hurt injury it's just not worth it if you
don't feel comfortable please take it in to someone else now like a professional
is what I mean so for this vehicle in particular we must evacuate it because
it's been open to the air the condenser was leaking so I replace the condenser
so now I'm gonna fill it up so first what I have to do is draw a vacuum on
the system so I'm going to hook up the Machine and do that right now.
All right so we're gonna want to find the ports on our vehicle for this Honda Civic "H" high
side "L" low side our ports are right there they're very very easy to access
so we're just gonna unscrew them we don't want to lose them so just put them
where you're not gonna forget to put it back on there's our low side now just a
general sort of fun fact the low side is always the bigger and thicker hose or
line if you want to call that high side is always a small one always so let's
get our cables like so so there's our high side
and our low sight is on all right now in this vehicle
I can't just charge it up and add the charge the reason is I fixed the
condense where the condenser is leaking so I replaced it
so because it's been open to atmosphere what we have to do is we actually have
to draw a vacuum what a vacuum will do without getting into a physics lesson
the lower the pressure the easier something boils so when you have low
pressure on your system basically it's under a vacuum all the moisture should
boil out of the system so let's go over to the Machine and we're gonna set it up
on vacuum now there's no reason for me to explain exactly how this machine
works because you'll have your own type of vacuum pump but what's important is
to vacuum for a decent amount of time I like to do it for at least thirty
minutes there he goes so now what we're going to do is we're going to open up
our valves here and you can actually see
we're drawing a vacuum
there you go we're drawing a vacuum on the system
so that's good it'll vacuum up the system vacuum mode any moisture so while
it's doing that I'll just briefly speak about we're gonna be putting in Red TeK 12a
I've had a few people contact me ask me how well it works so this is
an older vehicle so actually I've used it in quite a few quite a few vehicles
and it does work fairly fairly well now the other thing we should talk about is
if you have cans and you want to put a can in, there's a problem with newer
vehicles they really don't take much so for example this vehicle here this Honda
Civic let's look over the manual here so if we're looking at Civic we can see
here it's a 2006 to it it takes about a pound of refrigerant so really that's
not much at all so when we go over to our cans a pound of 16 ounces so this
can is basically all you could put in it because if you put two cans of this
stuff and you would overfill it and you can actually wreck it, so it's important to
know how much is in your system that we know because we're evacuating it there's
going to be absolutely nothing in and I can weigh it in with the scale so we can
get a perfect charge so I have the car running you can see the car is running
and we have it on max a/c all the way cold okay and we can see
that's our temperature so it's not cooling at all it's a hot day, it's
actually much hotter outside but I have it in the garage because it's cooler so
now we're gonna start charging up the system and we'll see how the vents
change temperature. So the machine is done and we are still holding a vacuum
so that's great so now what I'm going to do is I'm gonna close off the valves
okay that's very important there we go we're going to close off the valves now
the reason I had to close off these valves is this center line here that
runs all the way to the recycler machine I have to disconnect that because I have
to connect that line to the tank alright so I don't get it take two on this so we
only get to take one on this because we just cut a purge line once so right now
there's air in the line because like I said I've disconnected this from the
machine that was providing the suction similar if you had a vacuum pump you'd
have to disconnect this from the vacuum pump and then you'd have to connect this
to your feed supply of refrigerant so now there's air in this line but there's
no air in these lines are still a vacuum as you can see cuz the valves are still
shut so what I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna crack this line just a little bit
and we're just gonna purge any air and you'll actually see the refrigerant
there you go so now this line is full of refrigerant and there's no more air so
now once I crack these lines it'll be pure refrigerant going in to
these lines and if anyone's wondering if it was illegal for me to do this no it
was not because we're using Red TeK throw up a little picture thing there's
no license required it's not supposed to damage the environment so what I did is
just it's perfectly fine now an important thing to check on AC systems
is whether or not your compressor is running so there's the compressor right
down there at the bottom I'm just gonna sort a hold it here of it I'm gonna
throw up an arrow that center part should be spinning when
actually working when it's not working it will be stationary and the belt will
still move so that's really important and normally to get the compressor
running you should only need about an ounce so we shouldn't have to put much
in there at all it should only be about an ounce to get it going that's all we
need now when we go over to our Red Tek chart see what we're gonna be putting in
you can see there this car takes about a pound we looked it up so one pound it is
only 6 ounces of this Red TeK stuff so we are gonna weigh in six ounces and
that will give us the same as the one pound that it came with from the factory
so we look at what's in the tank right now we got 19 pounds in the tank so with
19 pounds in the tank and what we have to do is hit the amount button there
again and again and it'll show us 19 pounds in a tank we need to we need to
put six ounces in the car but we have to remember we still have freon or it was
actually not freon but our refrigerant in the hoses and that's gotta amount for
some so I really only want to put in about 4 ounces and then the rest which
is in the hoses should be fine so and whenever we enter and charge a system
we're always gonna charge it on the low side it's much easier to charge it on
the low side I charge with liquid so you got when you're charging with liquid you
got to be very careful how much you throttle in because if you put too much
push too much liquid and too fast you will damage it, so you can charge much faster
with liquid but you've got to be careful a lot of guys say you can charge with
gas and basically just explain it very briefly if you have this this way and
you were charging it would be gas mostly coming out if you had it down like this
the liquid would come out first so it's just important you can charge faster
with liquid but you have to be very careful all right so we're gonna start
the vehicle so the vehicle is started there you go now what we're gonna do is
we're gonna put it on "vents" we want it on "vents" we want AC max "recirculation" that's
fine all the way cold just like this you can see it's at 96
Fahrenheit so it's, or 95.8 so whatever there you go it's actually
cooling a little bit in the cars not even running what this is this is just
air movement that's cool in the thermometer because it was sitting there
if I just turn it up like this we can let it just run for a bit and it won't
get too much there you go it stopped there pretty much that's that's where
it's gonna be and that's just because of the air flow but 94 is still
way too hot it's not even working so let's go outside the car and have a look
so now I'm gonna start putting refrigerant in you can see we're still
holding a vacuum we're still good there and we still have our 19 pounds in our
tank which is great so no more than 6 ounces so I'm just gonna start it off on
the low side here's my low side I'm going to crack the valve just leave it
there you go and the compressor once you all about an ounce if you turn on so I
want to I want you to see this compressor turn
on
and as you can see it very slowly I'm just putting it in just like that there
you go. I don't want you guys to miss this!!!
There you go and it is turned on so it just turned on, I closed the valve we're
running on almost no pressure at all, and I want to show you how much we
took out of the tank to trigger that compressor there you go barely an ounce
because it was flickering between 19 pounds and 19.1 is what
it was flickering so basically it probably took half an ounce to trigger
that compressor, so it really doesn't take much so now let's start filling this
Again so we are going to crack our valve open
30 pounds okay we don't want to have too much, actually you can see here
there we go there's the refrigerant there there's the liquid there now if
you crack this open like I said it going to flow too fast.
Our eyesight's building up to now this Red Tek runs and a lower pressure
than 134a, and it will get cold, so we can actually open it up a little more
We want to throttle is (keep control of flow) you want to keep around the 30 mark
and if we look down here we can see our compressor is still running
we don't forget about what's in the tank so we can even close this off a bit.
let's go check how much we actually put in there okay so we put about 2 ounces
in there so we still got a few more few more ounces to go
maybe another 2oz, we are going to open this up a bit
We don't want to go much more (or flow will increase too much) Let's close it off
let's take another check see how much is in there
okay so I put it about another ounce, so you can see how slowly it actually goes
in and I take my time, don't rush it or you are asking for trouble.
just thinking out of my head so we were out around 19 we're at 19 pounds and it was zero so I
was pretty good so now if we go back here we're at 12 so 13 14 15 16 so we've
actually put four ounces in there right now so four ounces are in the vehicle
So you know let's go inside and check the thermometer, the low side is running 32 pounds so that's good
The high side is just under 150 remember this Red Tek runs
at a lower pressure than 134a. If we were using 134a, these pressures would be higher.
so let's check the temperature inside, so I am back inside the vehicle and you
can see nice it's really cooling down
and once you drive and you get airflow it'll even cool down even more you gotta
remember the car is sitting in the garage right now and it's not
driving it's just at idle so we put our four ounces in there and we need six but
you know, we probably have easily probably 2 ounces in the line
what I might do is just give it another another ounce, and then we'll just purge
whatever's in the line into the vehicle and I'll show you how to do that
so just going to put a little bit more in, and you can actually see the fluid there.
and what this fluid is, is this is from this line the feed line, the valves are closed
The valves are closed, so this is the pressure the vehicle is running at.
So I'm going to put a little bit more in, and there you can see right there
and there you go, that should be good, let's go back here, still at 12 I want to
make sure I'm going to full four in there
and there you go that's good it's still hitting on the 12 so thats good
know we know we are at the bottom (of the 12) anyway, that's good now we know we're good
So what we want to do now is shut off our feed line (the tank)
let's go over to our tank to shut it off, so I'm going to turn off the feed hose
so here's the feed hose I'm just going to turn it off there we go we're going
to turn it off and now this hose actually goes all the way to the bottom
of the gauges so if I stand up here that's this hose, goes to the bottom of the gauges
Its turned off now, so if I undid this, we we would waste an ounce or two
we don't want to do that, so what we are going to do instead
Now I can open this up to let what left in the hose go into the car.
and we're gonna empty this hose
there we go
The pressure is slowly coming down now I open it all the way valves open
all the way, and you can see the fluid
is getting less and less very hot outside so the main thing is to get rid off all of this
This will disappear and then
there will just be a little bit of gas, almost nothing
so this way we didn't have to waste all that liquid that was in the hose you can
actually see it's almost gone, it use to be at the 1/2 way point, but almost nothing left now.
During the whole video I've never opened up the high side
don't open the high because if you open the high side you release all the
pressure into the other side so not good so
I have just used the high side port to monitor
Its connected to the vehicle, and I can see the pressure, the pressures where I wanted them to be right now and I'm
just monitoring I've never touched this valve where the whole process today
never touched it I've done everything through the low
so that's very very important do everything through the low side
and right now the low side is totally open you can see the valve (sight glass) you can down there
Look, nothing left there (in sight glass)
so we have totally purged this line going to our refrigerant tank.
And what we can do is close this line off
just like so, now we're safe to disconnect from the tank, the tank has been shut off
you saw me shut that off earlier and we can pop (the hose connections) off
But first, let's walk around and check out the vehicle and let's see what the temperature is
inside so let's let's take a look and as you can see there there you go it's even
cooling off for so that is nice cool vehicle a/c is working great!!! So I'm
planning another video on how to properly put these in your vehicle if you're if
you're going to use cans, obviously not everyone's got a gauge set and an
evacuation system like this so I'm going to do another video that
should be up, hopefully in the next few weeks, I'm just waiting for a few
things for that because this seems to be the popular
thing a lot of people do this this was the proper way to fill it you saw we
actually evacuated it, we drew a vacuum, we totally evacuated it, we measured what
went in so we know exactly how much is in the system, so this is the proper way
to do it now a trick that I learned - disconnecting the hoses
Is disconnect the low side when the vehicle is running (pressure will be lower) its only about 35 lbs
So we can disconnect it, you can see the water on the pipe, you can see the valves are closed (MAKE SURE!!!!!)
Now we can just disconnect it, this one now, the high side you can see right now
just over 150 pounds so what we're going to do is shut the vehicle off
Then this pressure will come down, and we can undo the hose with less pressure.
Hopefully you've enjoyed the video GarageKing over and out, and hopefully I'll
see you on the next one everyone have a great day
stay cool out there :)