Air Con Re-Gassing

[Russats]

Has anyone ever regassed their air con, or is it a job for the professionals??

[insanitybeard]

In short, no. It's not a DIY job, end of. You require access to R234 refrigerant gas and specialist equipment in order to leak test and gas/degas the system, you also need to ensure you fill the correct quantity of gas and oil.

[chromedome]

It must be Summer again........................................!!!!!

[Russats]

Yes I've since realised this lol

 

Apparently all a DIY kit will do it fill it with gas and not remove any old gas and cleanse the system

[insanitybeard]

To be honest I don't think I'd even trust it to do that, does said DIY kit tell you how much gas is presently in the system or how much it's metered out? If not it's next to useless.

[Russats]

Apparently Kwik Fit are a good place to visit for aircon

[chromedome]

There have been bad reports about Kwik Fit on this forum.

[moog999]

Plenty of good reports re kwikfit on pistonheads thought, for a bit of balance. If your up near Leeds Google for "cool drive" he's a mobile auto hvac engineer, ex forces mech engineer and it brilliant with air con servicing and repairs.

[BrianH]

T be fair to them its not a bad deal to get them to regas it as it if doesn't drop the temp they don't charge you. It seems theres a pipe prone to breaking on the diesel models though so may be worth a look at that first (theres posts on here about it)

[chromedome]

Most reports I hear is they don't know the difference between a car with single or dual air-con and normally over gas the system causing damage.

[seatkid]

Most reports I hear is they don't know the difference between a car with single or dual air-con and normally over gas the system causing damage.

 

Overgassing will not damage the a/c as there is a 3-way pressure switch to protect it from both underpressure and over pressure.

 

Kwikfit are good if the branch manager there is good, you'll soon get a feel for him....otherwise just walk away and try another branch.

 

They use a fully automatic machine - as most places do.

 

Just make a nuisance of yourself and insist they connect both high pressure and low pressure ports via the two pipes (red and blue) - dont let them fill with just one pipe, no matter what they say.

 

Also stress before they start, "the correct amount of refrigerant is xxx grams"  - check it on the plate near the bonnet latch - use the lower quantity for the standard a/c and the higher quantity for the (rare) dual a/c that has roof vents in the passenger compartment - explain that a lot of a/c refill machines dont always have the correct quantity programmed for your car as there are many variants - then, when they give you the automatic report at the end, you can check it has the correct amount before you go.

 

F1autocentres and some other local outfits here are doing regas at

Edited June 12, 2014 by seatkid

[Russats]

Thanks for the advise people.

 

A job still yet to be done lol