And they quickly reminded me why I don't use shops. I went to have my ac system evacuated and refilled (unfortunately don't have the tools) was quoted 65.00 sat there for about 35 mins car pulled out of the bay with cold ac. YAY! right?

Wrong, went out later that night and was greeted to hot air from my ac vents. Compressor did not click on at all. My question is what did they not do so I can have my ducks in a row when I get there in the morning. Not to familiar with ac systems at all so I'm assuming they didn't really refill my ac or they didn't perform a leak test (I assumed they would do this because I was getting the system refilled) and all the freon leaked out somewhere. Did a visual test and saw nothing. So what the hell happened?

 

Hmm, well they should have put a vacuum on it for at least 45-60 minutes before even filling it back up (if it was empty when arriving). The refrigerant should also have a dye in it you can see with UV light to see where it leaked from. If it was open to the atmosphere the accumulator should also have been replaced.

 

 

Well there wasn't an leak I was aware of. A line was replaced so that's why I had it recharged.

 

I feel your pain about going to a shop.. my mechanic did everything for me for these past 10 years and now he cant work anymore :[
The shop prices compared to hes are crazyy

 

Just left the shop, now a line to the compressor itself is leaking. He showed me with the uv glasses. Weird thing about it is that it's in a centralized spot. Can this be patched? It's a rubber hose.

 

This happens to be the hose. Doesn't seem to be hard to access but just annoyed at the situation. So my plans are to refill it with uv dye after cleaning that particular hose then recheck the hose with a uv light and then if it's the hose replace and refill it and go from there. Question though, should I pay to get evacuated even though it was evacuated yesterday?

 

Use a screwdriver and just BARELY depress the Schrader valve where they hook into the high and low lines while the vehicle is off. If it feels like it has quite a bit of refrigerant pressure in the line still then have it discharged. It might literally have all purged except for like 5psi though.

 

Yea it's little to no pressure in the lines. Should I just refill with some freon with dye to confirm the leak?

 

I've always used nitrogen and then spray the suspected fittings with dishwashing soap water mix and it will make these super tiny bubbles that quickly turn into "foam".

 

Hmmmm so where could I find nitrogen lol.

 

Use nitrous

 

 

You can buy nitrogen at any welding supply shop, nitrogen won't introduce impurities or moisture into the system. Don't use an air compressor unless you have an excellent oil/water trap like for spraying paint otherwise it could cost you the AC compressor. Either way tell the tech when you recharge the system so they know to pull a deep vacuum on it to get rid of trace moisture, they SHOULD be doing that anyways but some places are lazy and don't want to put the vac pump on the car for an hour.

 

Ok great but how should I be putting this into the system? Kinda out of my element here so I have no idea what I'm doing. That's why I had just suggested the freon with the dye lol