Air Con Recharge...?

[pdaly]

I've got an EZ Chill recharge kit for my old car and was looking to recharge my 2007 2.0 Tdi Galaxy Ghia as it's not coping with this mini heatwave.

 

With the Air Con on max speed & min temp & recirculate, it only slightly cools the cabin after about 30 mins of use, and even then we can't get it to cool the cabin to a nice temp, instead we have to direct teh air vents directly onto our faces (rear passengers just have to suffer the heat). When I test the air temp coming out of the vents (thermomenter placed on the vents) it can reach 7'C but it doesn;t have much impact with the rest of cabin air temp. (I put this poor performance down to a large cabin and large windows)

 

I had it recharged 10 months ago and the air con is used all year round. I've changed the pollen filter (OEM) 1 week ago, but the air con is still pretty lame.

 

I understand that everyone says don;t bother doing a DIY recharge... but seeing as I have the EZ Chill Trigger Dispenser & guage, I thought I'd try this first.

 

I have looked under the bonnet and I have a black capped shrader valve next to the radiator (I assume this is the high-side port), the other port (low-side port) is at the rear of the engine (in the middle) next to the bulk head compartment.

 

When I connected the guage to the low side port, it gave a reading of 100psi (engine switched off).

 

Is this normal? has anyone else had an issue like this before?

 

Any advice would help about recharging, the high pressure or the rubbish cooling of the cabin.

 

Thanks

[GaryM]

As far as I know you need to measure the pressure with the system running at full tilt. Give it 3 mins or so to get going then test presures or do the refil.

[pdaly]

Yeah! ...I had forgotten to do that.

 

So I re-checked the pressure and its approx 10% low (30psi @ 25'C outside air temp) so I'll recharge it and see.

 

The Galaxy air con has been very poor from day one - it has the dual zone climate control and that works fine when one of us wants 24'C and the other wants 21'C, but if we both want 'LOW', the cabin only feels like 19'C.

[GaryM]

I have just topped up both my cars with a single refill, about 40PSI for todays temps. Plus I have just realised that the bottle has a

[pdaly]

i'm going to wait till tonight, when the sun sets so that the ambient temps not affected by direct sunlight/shade (what is classed as ambient temp when the car is stood in direct sunlight, but air con is in the shade :wacko: ), then I can take a true reading and top it up to the correct PSI .

 

Here's a chart that EZ Chill have on their american website...

http://idqusa.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Temp-pressure-chart-33776F1.jpg

http://idqusa.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/r134apc1.jpg

 

My hand on the vents... it just feels cool B) , not chilly.

 

Old Honda CV-V was nice and chilly. Wife's Peugeot 307 Estate can get freezing (smaller cabin, smaller windows). Galaxy is like a greenhouse on wheels. ...but a fast one!

[pdaly]

All sorted! It's needed a full bottle of refill to fix the problem.

 

The temperature has gone down and the cabin is nice and chilly. The air vent is now reading 3

[gregers]

is this check done with just the centre vent open?

[pdaly]

opened all vents and front windows

 

checked temps on a cloudy evening so that the sun/shade didnt affect the ambient readings.

[gregers]

ok cheers,ill have to check mine on the smax.