Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Air Conditioning Tips

Passed a milestone today,  which normally I would simply show and give the latest figures as to the costs per day and per mile.

But when I tested the a/c for the first time this year, it had nothing, which is rare cause I've had to add a small of freon  the past few years to get the super chill back, but even then I had something. 
So I went under the hood and removed the low end cap to hear it leaking from the valve. My refill kit had rusted thru so I hit up the walmart and get a gauge and freon (with lubricant, and NOT SYNTHETIC). Put him on the meter and he's pretty low for some reason, i'm slightly concerned about the leaking but my bicycle valve stem tool is not big enough to see if someone loosened up the thing and maybe that's why he's leaking. I put enough in to get half way thru the green zone, the added pressure stops the leaking valve, and do a road test. It works okay but when I stop the car, the cooling also stops. So knowing that a chain is only as strong as it's weakest link, I turn my attention to a/c radiator which has never been cleaned in 10 years.
I find the part behind the bumper is clean as a whistle but the bottom working half is slightly dirty. I check around the web to find a guy who simply uses purple power to remove the bugs and grime which accumulates in the radiator.
I have an old spray bottle hanging around cause I don't throw everything away just for this reason. Right off the bat I see the brown foam coming out the front of the radiator so I keep at it liberally concentrating on the dirtier bottom half. Then I hit it hard with the hose until I see clean water dropping down. I retest that sucker and I want to tell you something, I can't recall it ever being that cold, and the freon and gauge was about $33 and the gal of purple was under $5, so i'm once again considering myself lucky to have skirted the auto shop again, at a rather low cost for the comfort of driving down south in summer. Other than that the car been haulin the mail big time, when ever and for what ever  reason I need it to do.