Hi Everyone.

firat of all, im a new member so if theres a guide for this already dont flame, im just not good with the search tool

i got a 6gen celica a few years ago and finally got it on the road a year ago. i have been a fairly frequent reader of the forum for "how to" guides in a few things.

unfortunately now i am unable to find what im looking for so i decided to finally join in to ask.
im planning to do a loong trip this year to the south, so i turned on the key and decided to check if the AC works.... well it doesnt. after a bit of research i found out the most likely reason why it doesnt work its because it needs a refill (its been at least 6 years since the last refill if not longer)

my local garage does it for 55 quid, i found a couple of videos on youtube that made it seem extremely easy to do the job myself but i dont know if its that simple for a 15 year old car....

so if you know anything that can help me just leave a reply and hopefully ill get the AC ready for the trip at a discount price

Cheers

first you gotta check it for leaks, you have to buy the gas and the tool to connect it to it, turn the car on and the ac on and when the compressor kicks in you start feeding it the gas to the right amount.

is not easy to refill, i tried, you have to vacuum first, i just took it to a local place, when they run the 99 usd special

I had noticed the need for this sort of instruction around here and had planned to make a how-to as soon as it warms up enough to spend some time taking pictures.
I know a lot more about refrigeration systems than I do about the rest of the car


in order to get a good charge going on you'll need a couple of special pieces of equipment , not to hard if you have a friend to borrow from or can find cheap at a pawn shop
but by the time you've spent the money on that It may be less to just have a shop do it. Yet I personally wouldn't trust your typical redneck at a local shop to really understand
how to do it right.

it may also depend on the way things are in your area, in my part of the country your mom could walk into a parts store and buy R134a and nobody would even care.
in other areas people actually want to see your certification. I have certifications for all other types of refrigeration systems but have not botherd with the automotive one.


either way for a quick explaining - if you can get a automotive refrigeration manifold , not just the little one hose thing that attaches to the bottle but the full setup with
the two gauges and three hoses and valves. you can get on from Oreilys for not a lot.
in order to pressure test the system it is best to use Nitrogen because it is dry with no moisture in it. you can get a small tank and a regulator maybe from a pawn shop and have
it refilled at a local welding gas supply. and you need the fitting to connect the typical 1/4" flare of the regulator to the 1/2" ACME fitting on the refrigerant manifold.
you pressurize it with nitrogen up to like 200 psi to be sure you don't have some big gaping hole.

even if you skip the pressure test you will need to aquire a Vacuum pump, which you can often find from a pawn shop, again you will need the adapter fitting to go from
1/4" flare to 1/2" acme fitting that will attach the vacuum pump to the center hose on the manifold. the other two hoses attach to the H and L ports on the car, they are
sized so they only fit H to the red hose, and L to the blue hose.

but pulling a vacuum is ESSENTIAL to actually getting the refrigerant to work like it is supposed to, you vacuum out all the air and moisture and then let the vacuum suck in the refrigerant.
so that the sealed system contains only Air and Moisture. then you measure in the specific amount of R134a for the car.

theres' a bit more to it, like I said I had planned to do a how to with pics as soon as all the glaciers thaw...
there are automotive specific machines to do the same thing, but they'll cost you way more money.

of course if you only need to do it once It's surely going to be cheaper to just have a shop do it (assuming they give a **** enough to do a proper vacuum, don't get me started)
but maybe if you have a small leak, and you need to redo the system each season, or you're doing work on the car and need to redo It more than once I could show you how to
do it with equipment that could cost less than $150 at a pawn shop.

if you just "fill it up" with the little goofy one hose contraption and don't pull a vacuum it just won't be very cold at all.

Unless you either plan on doing this all the time, or feel the need to invest in the equipment (vac pump, refrigerant gauges, scale, refrigerant, etc) then its better to take it to a shop.

If it slowly went out, you might just want to pick up a can of freon and charge it. It is extremely easy. But if you have a leak, that's money going down the drain. A shop will vaccum test it first to see if it will hold. If it doesn't, they shouldn't charge you to add any. You can bypass shop costs by buying a dye kit. They can be steep in price depending on which one you get. Some freon bottles even have some built in, so you could just buy one can and see where that gets you. You can see the dye by naked eye if big leak, some smaller leaks can only be seen by black light.

not sure if you need a refil yet, you need to check if it has leaks first. If you don't know much about the car, do a quick refill, stores sell these with the refill hose. Find out if it leaks all out, if it does, you have to find out where its leaking, it could even be a stuck exp. valve. Look at the peek glass on the drier, if its bubbling pretty good, theres a leak, it should be constant.

its hard to explain, but if you could do the first step first, you can get an idea which direction to take. I mean some people even choose to keep refilling at 10.00 every few months because the leak is slow vs paying a shop to get it fixed at 500.00 or more depending on the problem so imagine refilling at 1 to 3 times a year is only around 30 bucks. its a preference at that point.

after the suggestions you guys leave im still confused, would one of those "DIY" cans work for my can ? i dont mind if the ac doesnt work at its best as long as i can notice an effect. i am willing to spend the 50 quid as it seems like its the safer option