hey bookyoh hope everything is good there. got the vette up and wheel off and got the manifold off. stopped for the evening. i think i'll remove the 2 bolts on top of compressor so i can have a little more room to replace the washer like seals.lots of green there with the UV light. looks like they will have to be levered out with a screw driver. those look like they are taped in so i'll need a little more room. look like the shift lever seal in a turbo 350 trans. does that tensioner for compressor belt work like the serpentine belt one? sorry for all the questions but i would like to do this right. so far everything good. ps right when the reds look good they take a dump.

 

The seal washers will probably come off with the hose manifold. They will come off very easily with your fingers. When you replace with the new washers, just put a bit of refrigerant oil on the rubber portion, push them on to the hose manifold, and bolt the manifold in place. Torque the manifold bolt to spec (I do not know what it is off hand), and you are done.

The a/c belt tensioner is like other serpentine belt tensioners. It can be challenging to put on a new belt. Perhaps leave the belt and tensioner job for another day once you have your leak fixed because it is such a short belt and sandwiched between an idler pulley and a tensioner..

 

vacuum for an hour.turned pump off and waited for another half hour. no leaks.started the fill process. 77temp 65 humidity. specs. say 26 ozs. first can was forever and compressor did not turn on. jumped compressor and finally was getting 38 lo and 200 hi. 62 out passenger side and warm out drivers. compressor sounds ok when running. wondering why compressor won't kick on. should not have to jump it. checked orif.filter and was clean. fans were running through process. maybe actuators under dash not working right? condenser is not dirty. will get back to this project next but right now i'll button up everything and get some ride time. thanks everybody for advice and coaching.

 

I am sorry to hear about your continued a/c troubles. I have a few thoughts to share.

1. when you pulled vacuum, did you have the high and low side gages connected and did both gages show vacuum, pulling vacuum from both sides? The reason I ask is one of my gage sets has a manifold fitting that does not seem to work on every fitting. I can attach it, rotate the ****, but it will not open the Schrader valve. If I had not noticed the bad manifold fitting and did not look for vacuum on low and high side, I could have pulled a great vacuum on my gage set only.

2. I am perplexed about the inability to pull in refrigerant from an evacuated system. Right or wrong, I typically feed in the charge as a liquid through the high side. Once the system has taken in as much liquid refrigerant as it can, I close off the high side valve on my gage set, start the compressor, open the low side valve on my gage set, and continue to pull in from the low side to get the rest of the charge in. Once again, right or wrong, I don’t get too concerned about letting liquid charge into the low side so I will let a slug in, pause for a few seconds, let another in, pause again, and so on. It is not a best practice to feed liquid to the suction line but I know the compressor can handle it and I feed it in a few seconds at a time.

I hope you get it going before the hot weather returns.

 

thanks for the reply book. fittings seem to fit alright. fed freon from lo side and had hi side attached to line but turned off at gauge. would feed a little at a time then opened the can up all the way. when i quit for the day i was getting about 38-40 lo and 200 hi. still cool on passenger and warm on drivers. i have a rocker switch hooked to the hvac relay in fuse box and had to run the compressor with that. have a sneaky feeling there are problems somewhere else. it's impossible for me to get at the compressor to clean off the past leak.in my opinion there was a lot of green on that compressor but it seems to work and sound ok when i switch it on. long shot could be relay but i don't want to start throwing parts at it. i'l get back to it but i'll have to suck it up in the hot weather here. thanks again. Denny

 

small update.first thing in the morning everything cold engine off gauges on. outside temp 62 humidity 92 lo 64 hi 65. that it for me in the morning,one test at a time for beginners. later on about 5 outside temp 68 humidity 72 i tested power to compressor and had power. warmed up to 190 engine temp and compressor running good now and quiet. ran everything for a while and got 52 out of passenger side and warm on drivers. when i quit for the evening i was getting 36 lo and 235 hi. engine temp 195. outside temp was 72 and humidity 70. warm drivers and cold pass seems like maybe blend door. defrost works good. i'm just glad the compressor is working now. one small victory. might be a few days when i check again. Denny

 

Your discharge air temperature and pressures seem a bit off for a 72 degree ambient. You did not mention your blower speed but even on high blower at 72 ambient, I would expect a much colder discharge air temperature and lower suction pressure. If the refrigerant side of your system is working correctly, your suction line should be quite cold. Under normal operation, the gas returning to the compressor has very little to no superheat so a 36 psig suction line pressure is approximately 41 degrees F. You may want to consider doing a little more diagnostics on the refrigerant side of the system before replacing the blend door actuator.

By the way, one brain fart mistake I made on my car a few years back was forgetting to set my auto temperature setting to 60 degrees. I had added a bit of R134a because I knew I had lost some over the winter and I’m looking at the discharge air temperature and it is like 50 degrees. Pressures seemed right and the suction line was quite cold. Finally I realized I had the temperature set at 70 degrees. Turned it down to 60 and like magic, my center duct temperature drops immediately.

 

hi book. blower speed was set on high and temp set at 60. i agree on discharge temp. blend doors will be last resort so i'll be diag the refrigerant side some more. real crap weather right now but i'll be back at it in a few days. i try to mark down temp,humidity,engine temp,and discharge air when i do my checks.have to write that stuff down so i don't forget something. have to concentrate on why the discharge air is not cooler. i'll see what the gauges say when weather heats up.

 

ok this is the latest. i'm gonna get a compressor kit. what one i'm not sure right now. ask 5 different ac pros and get 5 different answers. one thing for sure is that when i shine the black light on the compressor there is a lot of green. replaced the manifold washers but it's near impossible to get in there and clean all the past leak stuff off. this is a project i'll tackle in what i call the off season (Dec,Jan,Feb,March). don't want down time when it's nice out. i'll probably add a condenser to the kit. been doing a lot of reading and asking and have everything but a recovery tank. my ac friends have been a tremendous help as have forum members.

 

finally got a chance to get back to the ac project. thought i'd give it another chance before throwing parts at it. last time i went at it last week the hi press. hose blew. i was sitting in the car when it went so by the time i got out i don't know how much freon i lost so i had it reclaimed by my friend so i started at zero again. vacuumed for an hour let it set for a half hour and everything looked good. outside temp 78 humidity 82. discharge temp 48. windows down doors open. i'm very happy so far. don't have the cold pass side hot drivers side any more. was reading 38 lo 245 hi when i called it a day. btw i pulled number 27 fuse in the footwell for a couple days. don't know if that helped or not but it didn't hurt. thanks everybody for your advice and help. if anything changes i'll post it.