97 Cavalier AC Problem

Greetings Enlightened Ones,

Abour four months ago the high pressure line on my daughters AC came loose. Much to the surprise of her and the poor neighbor walking down the street the system evacuated all the freon and some oil in a cloud. I immediately reattached the line to the evaporator (I believe) and a local mechanic recharged the system, worked cool until now but has turned to hot Chico, CA air. Is it reasonable to expect this is a slow leak at one of the ends of this line and how probable is it that tightening the nuts will fix this problem or do the O-rings need to be replaced if a line comes loose? Also should my mechanic have done anything more than recharged the system?

Reply to
beekeeper
Loading thread data ...

To clear some things up first, R-12 is freon. Your 97 is way after the government mandated all cars be designed to use R-134a. The two are not compatible and should never be mixed. Once mixed, the system is contaminated and no one will touch your A/C system to avoid risking contaminating their A/C equipment. The evaporator is typically contained in the passenger compartment or right by the firewall. It is the heat exchanger that cools the passenger compartment.

Onto the question at hand. If your A/C system blew open and vented, there's a good chance that the o-ring blew off in the whole ordeal. If you didn't check that when you put the hose back on, then I'd be suspicious of that. If the system has lost it's cooling properties (meaning you lost the refrigerant), you'll need to hunt down the leak. It could be anywhere and it could be totally independent of the hose coming loose.

If the mechanic just recharged the system and did not check for leaks, he did a poor job at best. He should have checked to make sure you re-connected the line properly with an o-ring (and probably just replaced it since the system was already opened once). Before charging the system, he should have insisted on replacing the accumulator (also known as a dryer) and flushing the system and re-filling it with oil. Last thing to check is to make sure the expansion tube (aka orfice tube) is clean.

Those two things were unknowns. 1) don't know how much oil was lost when the hose blew off. 2) don't know if the dryer would be able to remove any residual water vapor from the air that got into the system. If there wasn't enough oil in the system, your compressor may be dead. If the accumulator didn't absorb the water in the system, the efficiency of your A/C system will suffer.

-Bruce

Reply to
Bruce Chang

No, DuPont-manufactured and branded CFC refrigerants are "Freon." Not ALL R-12 is "Freon." Not all "Freon" is R-12.

"Freon" is to "refrigerant" as "General Motors" is to "vehicles."

Reply to
Steve

MotorsForum website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.