1988 244DL A/C Success!! Oh Yeah!!
#1
06-19-2012, 08:29 PM
1988 244DL A/C Success!! Oh Yeah!!
This is a rather long post but I am putting it up here because, before I worked on my car’s A/C, I knew absolutely nothing about how the system worked. I wanted to learn about it all and I quickly found that there is a tremendous amount of misinformation and a serious lack of good info for the Volvo 244’s A/C. In fact, even the Bentley manual has virtually nothing of any value. It simply says to have a professional mechanic repair it.
So, I just went through my entire A/C system on my '88 240DL. It was somewhat frustrating because it was a learning process as I went along. I was flying blind and trying to find instructions on the web and from parts counter people. (...who know absolutely nothing! If they did, they wouldn't work the parts counters I suppose.)
Anywho, it had been so many years since I had had A/C on this car that I pulled off the old compressor and drier just eliminate potential problems. I bought my compressor at Advance and they had to order it. I also ordered the new expansion valve (orifice valve or whatever you call it) from Groton. I also happened to be looking at YouTube vids to see how to go about flushing the system. The cheezy flush kits at the car parts places didn't look like they would do the job for me. At O'Reily's I found a pro quality flush tool. I spent the $80 to buy it and then another $12 for the fluid. I figured this $92 was less than a mechanic would charge. So once I had everything apart I flushed and flushed. And I got a cool flush tool that I can use often in the future since we have one 940 and two 244s in the family.
When I got the new compressor, I put about 8 ounces of PAG 46 in the compressor while it was off the car. I slowly poured this into the low pressure side of the compressor. FYI, the low pressure side is on the left side of the compressor as viewed from the driver's seat. When I got the oil in, I turned the compressor over by hand several times. I could hear the oil getting pushed around inside and occasionally, it would cough a little out. Again, this was all while the new compressor was on the bench. Finally, I stood the compressor up on it's pulley and left it there while I did other things. I was only going to leave it for about 10 to 20 minutes but ended up getting distracted and it stayed that way overnight. I didn't think that would hurt anything. But I did this because someone had told me that this would allow the new PAG oil to sort of soak into the seals and such.
I also bought a little pack of "O" rings and replaced every "O" ring that I found.
The orifice tube was encased in what I would call "plumber's putty." It's narly stinky stuff and made a mess on the passenger's side floor. I haven't put this putty back yet but will as soon as I can.
The new A/C compressor came with the fittings for R12 because that's what the original had. I converted it to R134A fittings. However, after I had the compressor installed on the car, I found it was a really tight fit to get the R134A coupler hooked up. I had enough trouble with it that I finally took the adaptor kit back off of it and decided to use the original R12 fittings. Here is some more FYI for everyone. On the 244DL, the air mass sensor needs to be removed in order to hook up the gauges to the A/C compressor. I suppose there are some people that can hook it all up without removing the air mass sensor but I don’t have the patience. Fortunately my car will idle enough to charge the system. So I have R134A Freon in the system right now but the connectors are still for R12. Since I have no plans to EVER sell the car, I will remember this. But if I were to sell the car to someone else, I would make sure that they knew that this would be R134A even though it looked like R12.
I bought a set of gauges at Harbor Freight for $54 and some change. I bought Harbor Freight’s vacuum pump for $99. The gauges had all the hoses that I needed. From the driver’s side perspective, I hooked up the blue hose on the gauges to the left side of the compressor, the red hose to the right side of the compressor and the yellow hose to the vacuum pump. I turned it on, opened the valves and came back about an hour later. Then I closed the valves and let it sit for about 15 minutes. The gauges didn’t move so I figured I had no leaks.
There is another thread here where I discussed my new compressor not turning on but that was eventually traced to a bad ground. Remember that these cars have rubber mounted accessories and a ground wire made all the difference.
I had to buy a little puncture tool for the cans of freon because there wasn’t one included with the gauges. So I unhooked the yellow hose from the vacuum pump, (remember that the valves on the gauges are closed) connected it to the puncture valve to the yellow hose and spun on a can of freon. Next I tightened down the puncture valve all the way and then backed it back out. At the top of the yellow hose where it joins the gauges, I cracked open the fitting because I wanted to bleed out any air in the line. Then I fired up the car, let it idle with the A/C on full and opened the blue line’s valve.
I don’t know if the red hose (high pressure) was supposed to be opened as well. I didn’t open it. The system started taking freon and pretty soon the A/C was blowing cold air. I couldn’t remember how much freon to put in the system. In fact that’s where I am right now. I put in three cans. It’s blowing at around 60 degrees. I don’t know if I should put in more or look elsewhere to get better performance. But at least I’m happy that I did all of this myself instead of paying way more for a mechanic to do it. This is especially true considering that I don’t really like anyone else to work on my car unless I really know them well. This car has WAY too many miles for me to do any half hearted repairs. I’m sure that one of the reasons this car is running so well is that I don’t fix it unless I know it’s all done exactly correctly.
So I hope that my experience will help others who are starting out just as much in the dark as I was a few weeks ago. Let’s keep these old Volvos alive.
So, I just went through my entire A/C system on my '88 240DL. It was somewhat frustrating because it was a learning process as I went along. I was flying blind and trying to find instructions on the web and from parts counter people. (...who know absolutely nothing! If they did, they wouldn't work the parts counters I suppose.)
Anywho, it had been so many years since I had had A/C on this car that I pulled off the old compressor and drier just eliminate potential problems. I bought my compressor at Advance and they had to order it. I also ordered the new expansion valve (orifice valve or whatever you call it) from Groton. I also happened to be looking at YouTube vids to see how to go about flushing the system. The cheezy flush kits at the car parts places didn't look like they would do the job for me. At O'Reily's I found a pro quality flush tool. I spent the $80 to buy it and then another $12 for the fluid. I figured this $92 was less than a mechanic would charge. So once I had everything apart I flushed and flushed. And I got a cool flush tool that I can use often in the future since we have one 940 and two 244s in the family.
When I got the new compressor, I put about 8 ounces of PAG 46 in the compressor while it was off the car. I slowly poured this into the low pressure side of the compressor. FYI, the low pressure side is on the left side of the compressor as viewed from the driver's seat. When I got the oil in, I turned the compressor over by hand several times. I could hear the oil getting pushed around inside and occasionally, it would cough a little out. Again, this was all while the new compressor was on the bench. Finally, I stood the compressor up on it's pulley and left it there while I did other things. I was only going to leave it for about 10 to 20 minutes but ended up getting distracted and it stayed that way overnight. I didn't think that would hurt anything. But I did this because someone had told me that this would allow the new PAG oil to sort of soak into the seals and such.
I also bought a little pack of "O" rings and replaced every "O" ring that I found.
The orifice tube was encased in what I would call "plumber's putty." It's narly stinky stuff and made a mess on the passenger's side floor. I haven't put this putty back yet but will as soon as I can.
The new A/C compressor came with the fittings for R12 because that's what the original had. I converted it to R134A fittings. However, after I had the compressor installed on the car, I found it was a really tight fit to get the R134A coupler hooked up. I had enough trouble with it that I finally took the adaptor kit back off of it and decided to use the original R12 fittings. Here is some more FYI for everyone. On the 244DL, the air mass sensor needs to be removed in order to hook up the gauges to the A/C compressor. I suppose there are some people that can hook it all up without removing the air mass sensor but I don’t have the patience. Fortunately my car will idle enough to charge the system. So I have R134A Freon in the system right now but the connectors are still for R12. Since I have no plans to EVER sell the car, I will remember this. But if I were to sell the car to someone else, I would make sure that they knew that this would be R134A even though it looked like R12.
I bought a set of gauges at Harbor Freight for $54 and some change. I bought Harbor Freight’s vacuum pump for $99. The gauges had all the hoses that I needed. From the driver’s side perspective, I hooked up the blue hose on the gauges to the left side of the compressor, the red hose to the right side of the compressor and the yellow hose to the vacuum pump. I turned it on, opened the valves and came back about an hour later. Then I closed the valves and let it sit for about 15 minutes. The gauges didn’t move so I figured I had no leaks.
There is another thread here where I discussed my new compressor not turning on but that was eventually traced to a bad ground. Remember that these cars have rubber mounted accessories and a ground wire made all the difference.
I had to buy a little puncture tool for the cans of freon because there wasn’t one included with the gauges. So I unhooked the yellow hose from the vacuum pump, (remember that the valves on the gauges are closed) connected it to the puncture valve to the yellow hose and spun on a can of freon. Next I tightened down the puncture valve all the way and then backed it back out. At the top of the yellow hose where it joins the gauges, I cracked open the fitting because I wanted to bleed out any air in the line. Then I fired up the car, let it idle with the A/C on full and opened the blue line’s valve.
I don’t know if the red hose (high pressure) was supposed to be opened as well. I didn’t open it. The system started taking freon and pretty soon the A/C was blowing cold air. I couldn’t remember how much freon to put in the system. In fact that’s where I am right now. I put in three cans. It’s blowing at around 60 degrees. I don’t know if I should put in more or look elsewhere to get better performance. But at least I’m happy that I did all of this myself instead of paying way more for a mechanic to do it. This is especially true considering that I don’t really like anyone else to work on my car unless I really know them well. This car has WAY too many miles for me to do any half hearted repairs. I’m sure that one of the reasons this car is running so well is that I don’t fix it unless I know it’s all done exactly correctly.
So I hope that my experience will help others who are starting out just as much in the dark as I was a few weeks ago. Let’s keep these old Volvos alive.
Last edited by woodenyouknowit; 06-19-2012 at 08:31 PM. Reason: Spellcheck
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