A/C Recharge for 1993 240 Wagon

17yrs? the seals are probably gone (or eaten by walruses, i don't know). fluorescent die is borderline useless, in a car of this age.you will identify one or two bad seals. renew them & a third will fail. complete renewal is an option but neither cheap nor easy esp on a 240. most r134a has lubricant\conditioner, but it doesn't help unless it gets to all the seals (it just settles in the expansion tank). so turn the AC on for a couple of minutes once a month, yes even Feb.

240s were never known for having stellar AC systems, but it should still blow cold if everything is in good order. Is the auxiliary fan in front of the condenser behind the grill working? Also was it converted to R134 refrigerant? I forget whether Volvo had gone to that by '93 or if they were still using R12 but that sounds much too cheap for R12.

1993 was the last year for r12 w/ a few temporary exceptions for existing equipment. the standard recharge involves swapping out the nipples and using r134a, w/ a consequent loss of cooling. everybody does it & i mean everybody. your local supermarket, the children's hospital so long as they can pay their electric bills. it's cheaper than throwing $100,000s of HVAC equipment. even in the best repair the old compressors just aren't as high pressure as the modern standard -- so the r134a doesn't expand enough to provide adequate cooling. if you continue to get "tepid" air you probably don't have a leak. it's just the combination of the r134a & worn internal seals in the compressor. put a meter on the system (low pressure side) to know for sure!

Residential and commercial A/C systems never used R134. Very early systems were R12, but the standard has been R22 for decades. More recently R22 is being phased out because it is a HCFC. Not nearly as ozone damaging as the CFC R12 (about 5%) but that is still the rational for replacing it. The new refrigerant for those applications is R410, I'm not fond of it myself, the pressures it operates at are around double that of R22 and both the equipment and the refrigerant are more expensive but that's beyond my control. Propane is actually a very close substitute for R22 but due to the flammability it's not legal to charge an AC system with it in case there's ever a leak.

The fan was *missing*? What happened to it? That's not the sort of thing that tends to just fall off! A missing condenser fan will definitely impact the operation of the AC even if the condenser is fine. A system that has been converted to R134 does not provide quite the cooling capacity as R12, but I converted my 740 years ago and have found it to be perfectly adequate for the climate here in the Northwest. It takes a bit longer to really get going, but once it does, it blows cold even when it's in the 90s outside.

The humiliation should be theirs, not yours. You're not the one who committed fraud.

File a complaint with the police. These people are breaking the law.

wow allot of issues have been raised...

it seems some people know refrigeration. i was limiting the discussion to mobile refrigeration but even brick & mortar users were switching to r134a for a while to meet the Montreal protocol. puron (r410a) just isn't a seamless replacement for older systems. we have also learned that it has a significant carbon foot print. the new fair haired child is HFO-1234yf. no kidding. use all the letters & numbers you want we'll make more. it's beginning to look like time we considered propane again. a great refrigerant, so what if it blows up.

i'm glad you have placed a stop payment. it seems like these @*&)%$%#^*)) are also due for criminal charges.

what happened to the fan does seem like a good question. the local laws governing a/c differ so much, that there is never a standard factory design for the system. some of the installations are so awkward that i wouldn't be @ all surprised if a technician just ripped parts off. (did anyone else's mom or dad explain to them that when you put something back together you are always supposed to have extra parts?)

finally, even if you just got a simple (i think you know by now that is an oxymoron) a/c recharge, a system integrity test should be done. in North America & Europe*, there are agencies of the central government which will respond.

*ok Brazil, Ecuador, Argentina, Peru, Australia, Israel, New Zealand, South Africa & Japan & Korea & i'll give up now. i'm sure i've missed somebody.

LOL cheated on...

There's nothing wrong with trying out another garage, maybe someone recommended them, no big deal. The important part is to undo the damage they did.