Hey everybody GarageKing here and on today's episode I'm going to show you
how to top up your ac system using just a can
and one of these tools there's a few things you got to know before we do it
a few little checks because I don't want you to damage your cars but before we
get into that let's just roll a really quick intro and
then we're gonna get to it
so we're in our vehicle right now you can see the ac is all the way cold
recirculation ac there you go we got it running
and that is the current temperature so it is really really hot inside
this car now it's not just hot inside the car but
it's also very hot outside and that's going to make it more difficult to
fill but we can still get it done so first thing before we recharge our ac we
want to see if the compressor turns on and off so
we're going to listen for something you can actually hear the fan there i'll do
it again
so what that means is we have a little bit in the system but probably next to
nothing so we have our tool and we have our can
now on all vehicles you just have to find the ports
on this Honda Civic in particular, the bigger one is the low side with the l
and the smaller one is the high side with the "H", we're going to be using
134a in this vehicle, that's what the
vehicle came with from the factory when you fill the vehicle you'll see
that you always charge through the low side
and that's how these these little kits come they always come through the low
side there's two ways to do it some people
just put it in without the engine running but it's always better to put it
in with the engine running. First you want to check your compressor
front there, I'm going to throw up an arrow and if it is spinning that's a
good sign that means your compressor is working it's just really really low on
on refrigerant now if it's not spinning there's two things that can be happening
either there's absolutely nothing in your system
or your system is actually full but one of the sensors is gone and
that's why it's not running and that's a different
issue altogether so today we're gonna just focus on
if your system is low we're gonna top it up
and in my case you can see there's a compressor it is actually spinning
so that's a good sign that means it's just very very low but
everything is working so now what we're going to do is i'm going to show you
very quickly how top it up, so one of the things
we don't want to do is we don't want to overfill the system, so if we zoom in
here we can see Honda Civic there we go we can see it takes about a
pound of 134a so this can is 12 ounces now there's 16
ounces in a pound so if we put two cans in we would really
overfill it and we could damage it so we only want to do one can
now here's the thing if your system is already blowing cold you don't know how
much is in there just putting one can in might actually
damage your system so the only time you should ever be really refilling it
is when it's not cold at all and there is no cooling because at that point you
probably only have an ounce in your system and you'd be safe to add
one can so it's very important whatever vehicle you have to look it up
just so you know that you're not gonna overfill it
so now i'm gonna show you how to hook it all up. We wanna make sure we purge this
because this is full of air and we don't want this air going into the
ac system because air in the ac system will make it warm
so what we're going to do is I'm going to hook it up and I'm going to show you
how to purge very quickly just to get rid of any extra air that's in there
so we're going to take our can just like so and then what we're gonna do
before we pierce the can we're gonna make sure that our piercing
needle okay right here is backed all the way
out you wanna make sure it's all the way out turn it counterclockwise
just to make sure it doesn't pierce the can now what we're going to do is we're
going to screw the can on
there you go i got a good seal the can is screwed on now we're not going to
pierce it we're going to now connect it to the car
all right so we're going to take off our low side port
right here if i can there we go so i've taken that off don't lose it put
it somewhere where you won't lose it so i'm just going to remember that
mine's right there now what we're going to do is we're going to connect
our can there you go and you can see there's our pressure now
this is the important step so now what we want to do is we
want to vent out any air that's in there so there's not going to be much so all
we're going to do is loosen the can just a wee bit
just so we hear a little bit of air and then just tighten it not much
and that's it so that was next to nothing you saw nothing even squirted
out there nothing like that so we know just that little poof that's all we need
that's it now what we're going to do is we're going to start the car you're
going to see the gauge go right down because it's almost empty
and then when the car is running what we're going to do is we're going to
pierce the can with this and then we're going to throttle it in
to keep it in the blue zone okay so we're going to start the car and
turn the ac on to max there you go all the way cold
and just crank it up turn it hot and now let's go back outside and fill it up and
now that we've started the vehicle up if we look at the gauge it was 80 before
you can see now around 15 pounds so we have almost
nothing in the system it should be a lot higher than this
so i'm just going to put the camera on the tripod
and then what we're going to do is pierce the can and i'm going to show you
how to throttle it in so you get a good charge so you should
be able to see the can there and you can see at the gauge there
now what we're going to do is we're going to tighten
this part down until i can feel it hit the can there you go i can feel it
actually hit the can now i'm going to pierce the can I'm
turning it you can see this has changed there you go I've pierced the can
already and now the needle is actually continually going through the can so now
what I'm going to do is I'm going to back it off a little bit
there you go and now we're going to do is control it
in just like this there you go and i just turned it you saw
barely nothing there you go just a wee little bit
and you want to keep it in the blue zone which is 30 to 60 pounds
actually this one is about 25 to 55 so I like to usually charge around 40 pounds
or you can see it's sucking it in I'm going to open
this up a little bit more there you go you can see I've opened it more I hold
the can upside down to get a good charge because if you hold it right side up
sometimes it doesn't, you don't get a good charge
there you go we're going to let a little bit more in the problem when the can is
upside down is you get the fluid coming in
so it charges faster. I'm used to doing it with the gauges all the time
but with this with these things I guess vertical sometimes is better
because then you don't, you don't lose any
so we can keep this going like this as long as we got our pressure there that's
okay there you go we want to keep it in the
blue and you can see I don't, I really don't have to move it much
and i can really just play with that pressure on the gauge and look how much
I'm moving it barely anything and look at the gauge
so we're going to want to keep it close to the top around 50 pounds this way
we're not here all day and the other thing you want to do you
might be tempted to go inside and see how things are
looking but whenever I charge or someone's charging from the can
you should always stay with the can because if something moves or something
gets bumped the last thing you want to do
is have this thing go wide open and then a ton of pressure will come in and
it might damage something so you always want to supervise the can
until you're done and I can still feel the cans kind of heavy oh there we go
and i can actually feel the cans getting cold so a lot of it's coming out
and I'll probably speed up this part of the video because it's going to get
boring and no one's going to sit here watching me
stand for five minutes but I'll put the elapsed time in just so everyone knows
how long it did take for it to do it and you can see we're starting to
equalize now because if I open up the valve you see it doesn't go much higher
now it doesn't really matter I can go back
and I can tell there's the can and then I can open it up and that's all
that's coming out so you can see it's starting to
equalize but I can still feel the can here it's still about
half of the can is left but one of the reasons why it's taking so long to fill
up today too is it's very very hot outside so once
again what we can try doing is putting it upside down and then it'll
usually fill a little faster but you got to watch just to make sure
the valve doesn't leak when you do that so if I hold it upside down like this
and there we're fine there nothing's leaking out we're fine there so we can
leave it upside down we're actually just a wee bit over but
there's a 60 pounds so i'm just going to leave it i don't want to touch the valve
and you can see the needle's actually moving around a little bit
and that's good that means it's flowing inward and that's the pressure
The pressure differential when you're crossing the gauge block
and there you can see the needle's coming down so without even touching the
can because the needles come down so much
I'm gonna guess the can is pretty much empty and I can feel there you go the can is
actually empty so we've emptied out the can
so that's great and I can tell now because the compressor is actually
sucking it right down so I can't feel anything left in the can it feels like
it's just an empty empty can now next question
how do we get this off?? So I found the best way to get the can off is just to
close the valve on the can and then pop it off with the engine
running because when the engine's running you're going to have lower
pressure as soon as you stop the engine and it equalizes
you're going to have higher pressure and I'll show you a shot of the can so you
can actually see what's left in the can unfortunately you're always going to
have a little bit left over you can see if I open up the vent we can
have a little air in there. If I open up the can you
can see there's almost nothing
I don't even know if the camera could pick that up unfortunately you're always
going to have a little bit left over and the reason for that
is the pressure in the can is less than the pressure in the car so there's just
no way to put that last little bit in the car
now once you've taken the can off if you remember up here
I've had my little low side cap here, so we're just going to make sure we put
that back on just like so
all right so we're heading back over to the vehicle
and we can see I guess because it took so long to film
our thermometer is off but I can definitely tell it's nice and cold so I'm going to
press it and there we can see
62 celsius, haha, ohh 62 celsius that be hot
67 fahrenheit so that's really good it's nice and cool and then once the
engine revs or you drive it more it'll cool down even a little bit more so that
concludes this week's episode so if you have any questions or comments please
leave them below a like, hey, I would like it even more if
you have a dislike, keep it to yourself :) that's it for now
Garageking over and out, love you all and everyone have a great day thank you