I hope someone here can give me some AC advice, becuase it's going to get hot here soon! I bought this car a few months ago and the AC didn't work. Yesterday I decided to try and put some freon (R-134a) in it to see how long the charge would last, as soon as I began putting the freon in the compressor kicked in, but less than 2 seconds later it shut off and I could here freon escaping from the condenser behind the horn. So I looked and sure enough there was a decent sized hole. Went and bought a new condenser today and put it in. I was going to go have the system evacuated and recharged, but the guy is charging me $75 just to evacuate it, so I figured I'd try putting the rest of the can of freon in and make sure the evaportator isn't shot as well. Well, I hooked up the guage and it said 40PSI without adding anything, and when I tried to put some freon in it would not accept it and the compressor would not kick on. Now I am wondering what is wrong, it doesn't make sense why the compressor came on yesterday but would not today. Anybody have any ideas? Also, would the fact that it had 40PSI tell me that the evaporator is good?

 

The dryer might have released pressure.
You really need to have a vaccum put on the system and charged.
The can might not have had more pressure than the system has already.

 

Hey now,

I'm sure I heard someone here mention that you can 'over charge' the system.

I'll take a look around and if I find it I'll attach it.


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No - that is usually the outcome when you take your vehicle to a Volvo "stealer".
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But I don't understand how I could have overcharged the system when I only got about half a can in, and I assume most of that leaked out the hole in the condenser. And obviously the new condenser is empty so I wouldn't think it could be overcharged. And I thought when the compressor is not on the PSI should be around 100, and mine was only at 40. I am going to go ahead and get it vacuumed and refilled to see if that gets it going, I am hoping the evaporator is good, but I would think if it was bad there wouldn't be any pressure in the lines, but I could be mistaken on that because the condenser was bad and there was still pressure. Don't know exactly how all that works, how there is a hole one place but pressure in another.

 

Try getting it done.
Sometimes the dryer holds some pressure and then will release it later.

I will bet it will hold pretty good.
When they do it see if they will put dye in the system. Then if the freon level gets low again you can look with a blacklight and find the leak.

 

It looks as if someone already did that before it was wrecked, there was a bunch of green stuff in the condnser and on the schrader valve. Is it possible to even see the evaperator to see if any of the dye leaked out when the AC was functioning?

 

You will have to remove the lower dash on the passenger side and remove the black metal piece under the dash.
Then remove the glovebox.

Then you will see a black resistor remove that and look in the hole and you will see the evap.

 

Hey now,

Thereare'high and low' preasure side to the system.

There may still be preasue on one of the sides.

If you service person says that they need to evacuate the system then there may still be something in the system.

Sorry to hear about this as the summer is no fun without A/C and the Volvo can become quite the "greenhouse". All that glass ay. [sm=smiley36.gif]


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