At 10:07 PM 10/12/02 -0400, Robert Daley wrote:
>
>Great for you John! I'm about to start on the AC on 1065. I had to replace
>the radiator and water pump first (the car was overheating without AC load).
>While doing that I decided to take the fenders off and find some water leaks
>that have been plaguing me for years.
Bob,
Where were your water leaks coming from? What did you do to stop them?
>The AC is the last thing on the list (dare I say that?).
>
>What did you use to find and repair leaks? Did you dry / evacuate the
>system then charge with dye? Did you use the new R12a to charge?
Well, I guess I should say I cheated. I started talking to everyone I
new, looking for someone that did AC work, and if possible would come
to my place and work on the car. (This is probably why it took so long.)
Anyway, found an acquantinance in the local chapter of AACA that had his
own AC business and is now retired. He came over and look at the system,
and said no problem. I guess it really wasnt, but it sure took us long
enough, and the price was right! We've replaced the condenser, dryer,
expansion valve, all hoses and O rings, purchased numerious fittings.
I'm into this for about $300. I wanted to give the fellow some mone,
but he didn't really want anything. So I bought him an air angle die
grinder, and a tank of gas, less than $50!.
>What did you use to find and repair leaks? Did you dry / evacuate the
>system then charge with dye? Did you use the new R12a to charge?
We used a couple of different methods. First we pressurized the system
from my air compressor to about 92 psi through his AC gauges. Once charged
we shut the guages and waited about 15 minutes. If the charge held we
went on, if not, we listened for hisses, then used soapy water on all joints,
and finally we used a freon sniffer.
Found that one of the silver solder connections in the evaporator (the inside)
unit had broken, so we resolder it. Found a pin hole in the metal hose with
the site glass - where the metal hose had been vibrating and hitting the
to of the power steering resivor, and then found at least 1 big hole in the
middle of the condenser (which by the way, I'd have hot tanked and pressure
tested). We also found a leak at one of the crimps on one of the new
hoses. Had to take the hose back and have it recrimped.
> What did you do to stop them?
As stated above, we silver soldered 1, replaced the condenser for at
least 1, recrimped the hose for 1, and just tightened the connections
for the others.
>Did you dry / evacuate the system then charge with dye?
No, we didn't use the die. The sniffer found the leaks for us no problem.
We evacuated the system with a vac. pump which my friend owned. Then
we charged the system with Freon 22 to check for leaks.
>Did you use the new R12a to charge?
Yes, we did go back with R12. My friend said he had a bunch of it. But
he also said that later, we may switch to 276 which is a direct replacement
for R12 and supposedly has a slightly better cooling curve. The 276 is
about $9 per #, R12 is about $20-30 per #, and 134a is about $6 per #.
I plan to try and write up an article about our misadventures one of these
days.
John
John T. Blair WA4OHZ email: jblair@exis.net
Va. Beach, Va Phone: (757) 495-8229
48 TR1800 48 #4 Midget 65 Morgan 4/4 Series V
75 Bricklin SV1 77 Spitfire 71 Saab Sonett III
65 Rambler Classic
Morgan: www.team.net/www/morgan
Bricklin: www.bricklin.org
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