Thread: A/C Refrigerant Recharge

My bro with a '00 Taurus 3.0L decided it was time to recharge the A/C. After lots of bs from every auto parts store in town and even the dimwitted advice of a local repair shop....
"Dear Jesus, that A/C system is on the fritz, please bring it by the shop so we can charge you out the ass for an INSPEKTSHUN"...

We found the appropriate valve, ran the car with A/C on full blast, and filled her up with 2 cans of the necessary refrigerant. And guess what:
Solenoid kicked on, and COLD AIR CAME THROUGH THE VENTS INSTANTLY. No questions asked, A/C now works on demand without fail through a whole day of his Jimmy Johns sandwich delivery madness.

Before: the A/C controls were completely unresponsive. Now they work perfectly. Who knew: on FORDS and GMS a redundant system disengages the A/C system when the refrigerant is low.
And guess what, I did the same exact thing with my '97 Grand Prix SE a day later and BEHOLD: solenoid kicked on, and COLD AIR CAME THROUGH THE VENTS.

A little disambiguation is necessary, as I had people telling me to run red dye through the system, or check the seals, or check the doo-hickey at the blah blah blah. All day long for 2 days...

Unnecessary.

Sweet my friend that's awesome that it was that simple for you to get things up and working.

My system when I hit the AC on my dual climate does zilch, zero, nada, nothing. Hear no compressor kick on feel nothing but superheated air ! There's many shops that will do such a thing to you and there's many people that say do this do that, blah blah blah! However the way things work for me and working on cars I'll buy two cans fill it up and it all leak out or it will do absolutely nothing.

I guess I should get a couple cans and try, worth a shot.... to be continued!

Hey if it helps someone on this forum hell yeah.

If AC refrigerant didn't dissipate/evaporate/etc... they wouldn't sell recharge kits.

For both my brother's car and mine we proved without a doubt that an absence of refrigerant meant the a/c system would not turn on period. Hope this helps somebody.

I don't care what anyone may say about leaks/integrity of the a/c systems etc. Two completely different cars both recharged on 2 $18 cans of refrigerant each. Cans bought @ Meijer grocery store. Both a/c systems now work flawlessly. Mystical voo-doo trickery right...

You should put leak detector dye in it because it will leak out again. AC systems are a closed system and will not leak anything out if everything is in good working order. I filled mine up in my gtp to see where it was leaking from and it worked for a week and then quit again, but i found out the condenser was leaking.

Thats how mine worked put a couple cans in it be good for about a week or so then the pump started going out and the condenser started showing where it was leaking from and that was the end of my ac. Then I just put on a bypass pulley

So you have a slow leak and charged the system now it works......All a/c systems have a pressure sensor to disengage the compressor if the pressure is too low or high to prevent damage to compressor.