Aloha all, Lt. Commander Data and I have been toodling along the highways and byways of the Big Island happily until recently: he's not cooling me off so well. I keep having to put the fluid into the air conditioning. My brother (who is actually pretty good with most cars) doesn't think it's a leak. I wanted to put a can of the stuff that has dye and stop leak in it, but he says that's just asking for trouble -the stop leak will only gunk up the a/c and who can afford to replace the air conditioning? What has been your experience? We have a tremendous amount of vog lately from the volcano, ( I'll be ordering a new cockpit air filter and putting that in), so driving around with the windows down is not an option. Dies the stop leak for the a/c really destroy it? Mahalo, Laura G. in Kona
Where does your brother think the refrigerant is going, if not a leak? If you are loosing refrigerant, it must be going somewhere. A/C is not really a DIY job. Get it to an A/C specialist who is experienced with working on hybrids, or take it to the dealer. To find the leak, it will have to be evacuated and then refilled with R134a containing dye. Then once the leak is found, it can be fixed. This tends to be not a cheap repair.
Are there really stuffs people put in their car's AC system to stop leaks like you'd have em in a car's cooling system?
I would be pretty skeptical: the cooling system runs at pressures around 13 psi, the A/C (high side) can be 20 times that or more. I can think of a couple possibilities going on here. One, the refrigerant really is going somewhere and needing more put in, so there really is a leak, and it has to be fixed. Two, the A/C isn't performing well for some other reason and the OP keeps putting refrigerant in ('cause all A/C problems are fixed by putting more refrigerant in, right?), and that has now become part of the problem. Either way, it just has to be properly diagnosed and whatever needs fixed fixed, and then have the refrigerant charge corrected to the proper quantity. -Chap
If the wrong oil is put in, it can mess things up royally? I'd chime in: get a dealership to deal with it. I'll attach AC info from the Repair Manual, but still, I would just read it as a cautionary tale: this is something I'd leave to the pros. I believe just using a gauge set that's been used with regular AC oil can cause contamination.
Too much refrigerant will result in an over charged condition that causes poor cooling. As others have said, this isn't something you can guess at. Probably the worse case scenario is an evaporator leak because getting to it in the inner dash location is very labor intensive. Typically it's the condenser, which is in front of the radiator, that develops leaks usually from objects striking it while driving. Also, there are situations where the car will disconnect the a/c on purpose but that comes with warning lights and/or the car stops running.
DIY air conditioning repair is a good way to turn a kind of expensive job into a very expensive job. I also recommend taking it to someone who knows hybrid air conditioners. There's way more to it than just dumping in some coolant.
