Quiz question of the day: What type of freon does the 2010 Prius use? Last August I had a huge wreck in my car and the shop that repaired it did a lousy job all around. Now that it has gotten hot, I discovered that the A/C doesn't work. I took it to a different shop and they got it at least partially working, but they think the previous shop may have used the wrong type of freon in here, because the 2010 apparently takes a different type from other years and/or models. I looked at my repair invoice and it says it was refilled with R-12. Is that the correct freon?
R-12 was banned for new use in 1994. [ame=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dichlorodifluoromethane]Dichlorodifluoromethane - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame] There is no chance it was the correct refridgerant for any 2010 car in the US.
The term "freon" refers to the DuPont-brandname for R-12. This has been banned for a long time The correct refrigerant is R-134a. The unique thing about the Prius is the oil used. You MUST use the special ND-oil-11 in the Prius, as it has an electric compressor and the oil is specially designed to insulate it If the wrong oil was used to recharge the system, the compressor is probably damaged
That sounds like it very well could be the culprit. The air it was putting out was only slightly cooler than outside air, and if you try to put it on outside air, every 15 seconds or so it would automatically switch between outside air and recirculated air. The Toyota techs had never seen anything like that. They replaced the compressor and one other piece and it fixed that problem, but they said that when the car is stopped or idle or something like that the air temperature goes up by a few degrees, which is what makes them think it's the wrong type of freon, or I guess to be more accurate, the wrong oil. Thanks to all for the info. I knew I could count on the Priuschat folks to point me in the right direction.
There is usually a label under the hood, that has that information. You can do a daily subscription to Toyota TechInfo and get the factory-source data
Like Jayman said, Toyota Technical Information Service, under New Car Features. $15 for two days access, and start downloading everything of interest. I plan on taking another two days in July to get as much of the Service Manual as I can. If I remember correctly, if you sign up early in the day, you actually get access through the following two days. https://techinfo.toyota.com
