Air Conditioning Not Working (system performance, leak test) - Honda CRV

hey guys Paul Danner here aka scanner Danner my students gave me that name years ago my name is not Dan it is Paul anyway today we're working on a 2011 Honda CRV with an air conditioning problem I have no idea what's going on with it the only thing I've done so far is started up inside turn the AC on it didn't hear an RPM change I didn't hear the compressor engaged so the first thing we're going to do is connect up some gauges see what we have special thanks to cameraman Caleb who is here with us today alright in light of my break video I did on my truck and I got all con agree for not having my safety glasses on and I was wrong I should have them here for doing air conditioning work I don't have my safety glasses but I'll put my sunglasses on at least I have a refrigerant line that would rupture whatever I got some kind of eye protection on we should have eye protection I didn't stress that enough in my last one right now I'm just connecting the gauges are low and our high side adapters are right here they're actually marked on this one this is our low this is our high so our first check for an air conditioning system would be to check what's known as our rest pressure meaning the compressor is not running and that's what I'm doing first so making sure all of my lines are tight valves are closed that's good it's completely empty so all I've done so far is I've connected my low side gauge getting start real quick right here Caleb and this didn't change at all what we should have with an r134a system is we should have roughly the same pressure as temperature is outside so there's a pressure temperature relationship with every refrigerant and r12 and r134a are very close to our degree fahrenheit scale so today is about 70 degrees out what we should have is 70 psi of rest pressure now at this point there's really no reason to connect my high side gauge my system is empty a lot of people would want to see that too but it's not necessary I'll do it for you guys there is no let's be clear about this with an air conditioning system when it's not running there is no low and no high side of a system there is one pressure in the whole system at rest that is I think I said that right at rest in case I didn't addressed with the compressor not running in the system sitting once pressure has equalized when you shut the car off your low side pressure is the same as your high side pressure so just one gauge connected showing me no pressure in the system this thing is empty so what we're going to do next is we're going to air charge it and we're going to check for leaks just using soap and water I've shown you guys this method before in my jeep repair videos I'll put some links in the description of this video that will direct you to those other air conditioning repair videos I've done I do not have nitrogen I agree with you guys that nitrogen would be ideal we're using compressed air and again for you guys that maybe didn't see that series my argument with using compressed air is what do you think is in this system right now it's completely empty of pressure there is atmospheric air in this system I'm using compressed air I'm not going to cause any more damage than what's already here the desiccant in the receiver dryer it's already saturated so we've just relocated closer to the garage so we could get some air and what I'm going to do is go right into the center port on my gauge set fill this thing up with air as far as how much air pressure most shop air compressors are around 150 psi to perfectly fine with that number some of you may be concerned given that the low side operating pressures of an AC system run about 30 psi with the compressor running so maybe you're thinking well put 150 psi in a system that should have 30 on the low what about the low side what you have to remember is when you shut the car off and pressure equalizes maybe it's a real hot day you have 300 psi on the high side 30 on the low where do you think that pressure is going leading back into the low side or take a day where you you've been driving the car you shut the car off close you know the hood is shut underhood temperatures maybe 150 degrees so your rest pressure your rest pressure alone is going to be about 150 psi in that scenario so feel free to put as much hair pressure in it as you want well maybe not but 150 psi um find with and that's what I'm going to do a couple of things that we want to do with this air first one of course is to find the leak and the second one if it holds at all we're going to run this car for about five seconds with the compressor compressing compressed air to make sure that it can do its job and then that will also answer all of our electrical concerns in other words I put air in this system turn the clocks on and it does engage that tells me that the inputs on this system are good the outputs the computer relay wiring clutch all of that and that is certainly something you'd want to know up front before you would so any type of major AC repair imagine if this say needs an evap core and you have to rip the entire dash apart and when you're done and you fix that leak you find out you have an electrical problem to the compressor clutch not a good way to approach it we need to know this now that's why we're using this method so over here Caleb just going with my air nozzle here you don't have to be necessarily zoomed way in here Caleb you can back up a little bit the gauge the gauge pressures aren't really critical but I'm opening my low side gauge and I'm putting in it right now what you can watch the high side gauge increasing and we're just I'm going to give it whatever the shop has if I can and just screwed up with my air nozzle here so there's 125 150 and then I shut the valve so right now we're looking at 150 pounds of pressure in the system both of these nozzles are closed do I hear anything I do not another thing we can do is we can watch this gauge for a second either one but this one's buried so right now we'll watch the high side gauge and let me get my hands off of it so there's no movement let's just watch that for a second alright so what this looks like right now is this has a leak of course because it was empty refrigerant doesn't just disappear we have a leak no question about it but it's not a big leak and we can at least do the rest of our techs right now so next up before I start going over this system with just some simple soap and water I want to start the car and turn the a/c on we're going to watch our gauges and then see what our compression pressures or our pressures do which would indicate our compression pressures of the compressor compression pressures of the compressor it will indicate whether or not this compressor can do its job how's that that probably sounds a little better hang on let me get one more body alright Tim is going to be our timmy is going to be our compressor guy just about like five seconds max with that a/c button on okay alright go ahead and start that Timmy watch the gazes wanna see this so good it was like three twenty five and twenty five nothing wrong with the compressor nothing wrong with the wiring computer again inputs/outputs relay clutch everything is good all we need to do with this particular AC job we need to find the leak that's what that test does air charging a system gives us that ability I would agree with you guys nitrogen would be ideal I don't have nitrogen and I've been doing it this way for 20 years never had an issue of course we will evac the system very well when we're done take the moisture out of it thanks Timmy that's all I need you for brother so now what we need to do is we need to find this leak and unfortunately being outside in a parking lot is not ideal but I really want to take this cover off and focus on the condenser and focus on the compressor itself what I'm what haven't noticed about r134a systems over the years is they're a lot more difficult to locate an area of a leak see I started in the field in 1993 full-time and there were still plenty of our 12 systems out and our 12 used as a mineral oil and when there's a leak there would be evidence of oil on our 12 systems and what I found over the years with r134a is the oil they're using either pag or ester oil apparently is water-soluble one of you guys can correct me on that I may be wrong in my terminology but here's the thing we never saw oil leaks like we did in the r12 systems that's my experience with r134a so visual inspection is a little bit more difficult as what I'm getting at I'm gonna pull this top cover off these little clips and then see if we can do at least get down to the condenser a little bit better for the camera this needs to be a scanner dander pocket screwdriver some merchandise I'll add it to my list of things to do and poster that'd be kind of creepy just doing a visual and the condenser here and you can come over here tail up and the condenser would be so this is our rod right here or our our rate wait I'm trying to think people make fun of us a radiator rat but everybody else says radiator here's your radiator aka your radiator here in Pittsburgh or your rad so this is the rad and right here in the front our condenser and so the first thing I want to do is I want to do a visual on the condenser especially along the fins and I'm going to spray it whoops you can just kind of stay zoomed out for a second here Caleb and I'm gonna spray this down and we'll see if we can't actually you should be following me wherever I'm spraying if you can like zoom in right here over here I'm from this side this angle down you want to be alright so I'm just spraying the corner of the condenser over here and then come over here on this side I'm going to do the other part and then we'll hit it from this side just looking for bubbles then I'm going to find the lines where they come in right here is one of the connections we want to worry about it the condenser and and it's fine I don't see any any bubbles at all there all right the next line is this one right here on the bottom as you can see no bubbles coming out of that either so it doesn't look like it's the condenser moving on so knowing your plumbing your a/c system is important too and so we'd have a line that we come from the compressor would go to the condenser and then from the condenser it go to the evap inside the car and that would be let's do those one of the time so you guys don't get lost alright guys these camera shots are tougher where we are but where this some I think I get my laser pointer on on the camera so this line right here that is known as your that's your discharge line okay and that is discharging a high-pressure vapor from the compressor the compressor is sitting right there in fact that's an area I want to spray right there next is the back of that compressor and I'm gonna look for bubbles there so that would be a highly suspect area for a leak is the suction discharge lines on the back of the compressor I don't see anything next thing is going to be the line itself any part of the rubber line nothing there and I am just about out of soap it's just stupid I didn't bring any more with me Caleb or another area this is my suction line it's a rubber connection again connection here rubber here spraying all of this no leaks shell it anywhere then back in here head right back here let me get my light we're going to revisit all of these places I'm spraying here in a minute this connection where it goes into the firewall that is my evap core that sits inside of there there are really two places that the soap and water has a difficult time locating and that it would be the compressor shaft seal in the front and then the evap core itself or the two places that soap and water is not going to really help me um once you just kind of hang back for a second Caleb and let me try to locate this and and we thought then we'll get the camera on it that looks like dye here come over here this is the discharge line it looked like there was some green oil on that connection but I don't see bubble there over the years guys on a case like this where you know we have a leak check out look at my gauges I'm gonna say we have a very small leak but but this isn't very small I mean we've lost a pretty good bit of pressure already we were just below 150 we lost over 25 psi we should be able to find this this is a pretty significant leak let me just eyeball all my connections again kind of stinks we're outside where we got wind I can't really hear very well that I'm getting old I can't hear anyway much metal over the years by the compressor down I'll try to get you guys in here I'm just about out of my soap and water I left the rest of it at home which is dumb stupid spray the front of this compressor one of you guys are probably yelling at the screen right now saying uh it's the evap cooler it's the compressor they go bad all the time you might be right I don't know this system I'm just going off of standard procedures is what I'm teaching here not a Google search on what's a common failure now I can do that too and maybe I will to guide me but these initial steps everyone needs to know how to do it you need to know how to put air in the system or nitrogen if you want to use that check the compressor know your system know your components port and stuff then maybe we can do a Google search on what a comm and fill your area is for a leak that would really help a lot if we were up in the air now and I had this bottom cover off and I could look at the bottom of this compressor and it's really something that we may have to do because I can't check the evap core over here Kayla you can stay zoomed out but there's an area right here see this hose that's coming out right here that is known as your evap drain tube and that would be where the moisture comes from the inside of the car when you're running it that's an area we can use a leak detector and you know basically you're sniffing for a leak but you need to have refrigerant in the system to do that and so we can't really do that test I need to get underneath this man I need to check this compressor better and I can't really do it here we're going to do with my lame-ass pocket screwdriver someone was in here we're missing some clips one missing here one missing here try not to break these clips so far so good I have not broken one all right two more on the other side that's good enough for me to get access is there evidence that leak here get a shot here Kayla lay down on the actually let me spray it first like I said unfortunately I see no evidence of leaks no oil traces and this the compressor shaft seal the soap and water method is not really useful for it I really need to do a sniff test and I can't there you can get a saw to I guess you were huh yeah I do over so that I was okay bottom line is condenser up here the other side back here you know inside of a week this is we would we should be able to see it so I'm really what I need to do now I need to evac this system I need to put some refrigerant in it and we need to do the last two texts which is the compressor shaft seal and then the evap core the drain tube again now would be the time to do a google search and find out what a common failure is on these like I said one of you guys are probably yelling at me right now saying what it is because you've done a ton of them but we're down now even lower we're down to you know maybe let's see what each one of these lines would be 25 each one of these lines is five CSI it looks like so we're down to 115 psi now from almost 150 pretty pretty significantly you know it is possible it's possible that there's some residual refrigerant in here even though that showed zero that maybe I pick up something I'm going to grab my leak detector now I'm used I haven't used this thing in a long time I bought this from a Matco guy back in the day I'm hoping it still works it doesn't sound good number false positives being a thing with this - but our drain is almost not worth doing because there is no refrigerant in here but at least I can show the process here come down here again Cahill's so refrigerant will always be sent the best underneath because that's what you'd want to do with refrigerant in there you go underneath the compressor not above it but underneath the line right what we want to do but again we need refrigerant back up come here's where my hand is that's the drain tube discharge right there so what you want to do is you put your cool right in the drain tube and of course we need refrigerant right but that would be the last two texts we need to do and unfortunately I am my hands are tied here man Tom Pete does not have I don't know if I mentioned that he doesn't have a recovery machine we can't do this easily all right so here's the plan I'm going to take all the air out of this system [Music] and we're going to connect it to my little hand not hand vacuum pump my vacuum pump that I purchased for doing some home repairs and the reason that we want to do this guys is on we want to get all the moisture out of the system moisture and air conditioning do not get along so what I'm going to do off-camera we're going to evac this then we're going to put a little bit of refrigerant in the system and we'll see if we can locate it that way all right so pretty simple little [Music] I'll pier tail pulling this into a vacuum and what we want this this gauge is open and you don't have to open both doesn't matter remember that both sides are really connected when the car is not running but you can open both if you want and to be clear when you open these valves you are opening so let's say blue and shut right now if I open the blue what that does is that's connecting the blue to the yellow and when I open the red it's connecting the yellow to the red if you have them both open you're really exposing both sides to this yellow hose the reason I said you don't need them both open is if I'm pulling from the low side I'm also pulling from the high side you see this needles pegged right and there really doesn't read a negative pressure on this one but then we use the low side for that to each his own ideally we want to pull this down as low as possible 29 inches of vacuum 30 inches of vacuum what that does is that lowers the boiling point of water I believe water with and I could be wrong with my numbers here so forgive me but water will boil at 0 degrees Fahrenheit with a vacuum pulled on it of 30 inches so what we're doing right now with this vacuum pump is we're boiling all of the moisture water accumulated in this AC system out of there that's the whole purpose of pulling it into a vacuum so another leak check that we can do guys and I just I just turned the valve off in the center or this valve is off this valve is off so even though we have vacuum pulling here we're not exposing it to the system what you can do is you can watch your your low side gauge for movement or a loss of vacuum and I want to warn you guys that you can actually have a system that changes as far as vacuum and pressure where maybe one it may hold a vacuum but it won't hold a pressure or vice-versa so it's just another way that you can do a leak check we know we were losing pressure very I don't want to say very rapidly but it was pretty significant something else I forgot to mention to you guys as we're waiting for this gauge to maybe move is I never checked my Schrader valves so it's another area for a leak that we should consider if you can't find a leak anywhere you need to also check the Schrader valve connections now for us we had a loss of pressure of you know 30 40 psi just in the time we were doing our checks and obviously my gauge is connected so it's not going to be the Schrader valve this isn't really changing let me be clear again as we're pulling a vacuum on this and that's kind of annoying isn't it maybe I should not have that so all right so just to be clear guys there's also another another area for leaks and that's the valves themselves I called these Schrader valves but your service port right we can have a leak here that you're covering up by connecting your gauges another thing would be your gauges themselves and making sure that they're not leaking and that's something that maybe I need to recheck I mean we know this system lost its refrigerant well I guess what I'm questioning right now is that 150 psi of air and the loss of it was that because of my gauges because I never really checked them because the reason I'm questioning that is how well this is holding vacuum right now which means it's a very small leak and not significant like I thought so here's what I'm going to do I'm changing direction before we put refrigerant in this I'm going back with air again and I want to recheck and make sure that my gauges themselves were not an issue and I still have a little bit of soap left so I'm going to do that we're going to re air check it one more time I'm going to drop this a little bit get me right at 115 over here Caleb we're going to put this gauge right at 115 right now okay make sure that those are closed close all these and spray the gauges down your new gauge is what doesn't mean we didn't have an issue there now one of the things I did in between is I also maybe didn't have these tight enough you know it looks like we're already dropping now I'll double check my service ports here in a minute but I want to watch my gauge it looks to me like that that low pressure gauge is already dropped from where we were from where we started so it's holding vacuum but it's dropping pressure and to me I think that really speaks to the compressor shaft seal being the issue because you know an evap core that's leaking I don't really think that pressure and vacuum would would alter that leak is it's a metallic metal hole in a component as opposed to a shaft seal that's exposed to varying pressures one being a vacuum the other being a pressure weird absolutely leaking so again I want to emphasize we if you can't find a leak anywhere we have one my gauges are connected if you can't find a leak anywhere you don't want to forget about your service ports and it's as simple as taking these off with your pressure still in there and then putting a little bit of soap and water in there and we'll do that in a second I just want to make sure you guys are clear that we are absolutely leaking I started at 115 in the matter of you know two minutes of me talking we've already dropped about 4 psi on this gauge where each line is 2 I believe 2 4 6 8 10 yeah each line is 2 psi so we've dropped 4 psi in the few minutes that I've been talking clearly we have a leak it is not my gauges because I mean that's one thing that you've got to trust your equipment it's not the gauges and again it held vacuum so that's suggesting not the gauges - all right so the last thing before we pull this under a vacuum and do our refrigerant check is pop the line off go in the service port make sure you're not bubbling up there right those bubbles are just from me putting some soap and water in there so that's good and then this one - cool so those are not leaking and then of course I don't want that soap and water going in there so just blow those out when you're done we don't want that we don't want that moisture going in the system don't forget about your service ports I really feel like when we drain this out we put some refrigerant in it we're going to find that leak right away at that compressor just based on the fact that pressures dropping pretty quickly and vacuum is holding so the air pressure out pull this under a vacuum I'm gonna let that run for a few and then we're going to do the lead set one more time using vacuum just to show you guys that all right so what you guys missed again off camera we let that run for about a half an hour pulled all the moisture out of this system it actually held vacuum surprisingly I had Pete put a little bit of refrigerant in this for me we didn't put a lot in maybe maybe 12 ounces 10 ounces of refrigerant let's take a look at our pressures right now you load sides about 20 high side is just over 100 so clearly low and refrigerant outside temperatures again it's not we're hot today this is going to be enough for us now that should be able to use my leak detector and let's go to the compressor soft steel and then the evap drain and see what we get these tests are going to be done with just just using rest pressure guys and if you watch this when we talk about rest pressure we have a high side pressure that's dropping and you have a low side pressure that's increasing and what I want to do is let this sit let these pressures equalize because I really want my low side to be higher and it'll help me in identifying any leaks on the low side with my low side pressures being higher so just kind of wait for a couple of minutes let these pressures equalize and then we'll start doing hourly checks I have to trust my equipment this is an old piece of equipment and you know I don't like to vent refrigerant to the atmosphere but I need to know that my tool is working and so what I'm going to do is just go around this low side port and I'm just gonna crack this for a second cool so I can at least trust my leak detector now we're going to go underneath and hit that compressor shaft seal okay let's try the drain tube there's a variable here and that is with this low oppressor we still can have a compressor soft steel issue I'm only sitting about 60 or 70 psi RS pressure so from the top again Caleb I'm going to go down and range this that's it man I am shocked Oh Caleb I'm shocked so the tips in the atmosphere right below the drain - I mean I'm not even putting it in our problem we'll do it multiple times just to be sure I am absolutely I'm absolutely shocked that contradict doesn't it what I said about the compressor staff still the fact it would hold vacuum and would would bleed pressure to me that convinced me that this was the compressor shaft seal and what I just proved to you guys is it is not this was the evap core that's leaking got to have a electronic leak detector again I some of you guys are buying tools and I don't know if I can even find this tool for you guys I'll try I bought this off of the Matco guy I'm telling you it's got a it's got to be 20 years I've had this tool so that's the brand I don't know that that you will even be able to locate this it is for r134a r12 and R 1 and R 22 I can tip instruments gif instruments I'll see if I can locate this on Amazon and link it for you guys the only reason I would I would say that if you have a tool that's lasted you 20 years here's another way to look at this this thing sat in my toolbox in my garage probably unused for 10 of those years with old batteries left inside that were leaked out you took the batteries out scraped all the crap off put batteries in and it still works so I mean that's got to be some props for that tool anyway need a leak detector for sure so the last part of this guy's listen I'm not I'm not doing the repair the repair is the entire - has to come apart and big job right so this is this is a primary example of the test procedures I showed in this video why you want to adopt some of them and you can you alter it on your own if you want to use nitrogen again that's great compressed air I'm fine with but think about this job imagine if we sold this job we find the leak right we stole the job did the evap core um only to find out when you're done that maybe here would be a worst-case scenario maybe the engine computer driver for the compressor clutch is faulty and it ends up needing a new engine computer to make the clutch circuit relay and everything turn back on again imagine selling that to the customer after you've just sold them a thousand dollars worth of repairs maybe even more to repair the evap leak only to come back to them when you're finished and say you need an engine computer or you need a compressor or you name it so air check these things turn the compressor on yes the compressor will be running with no lubricant these compressors are lubricated by the refrigerant itself so the refrigerant goes through the system picks up the oil lubricates the compressor so when we're air checking these and we're running the compressor what you need to understand is that compressors running dry you can damage a compressor doing that but we're not going to damage it in the five seconds or so that we have the compressor running I've done it thousands of times ok and what that tech does again is it confirms everything it confirms your low side high side pressure sensors and temp sensors and clutch and relay and wiring computer switches internal all of that if the compressor turns on when you put air in it electrically you're good and now I'm confident to sell this dog to the customer what gets sold receiver drier remember this thing was open to the atmosphere one second let me familiarize myself with what kind of system this is okay yeah my dryer is over there in fact we forgot to spray the dryer which is in nope where is it located I don't even see the dryer okay I'm a little unfamiliar with this system I apologize but one thing that I will say for sure is when we when Pete does the evap core he also needs to sell the desiccant wherever the desk in is whether it's in a receiver drier or accumulator drier not a hundred percent so I believe that this is a TXV system thermal expansion valve system meaning it has a receiver drier I just don't see it anyway not important needs to be changed evap core drier wherever the desk in is needs to be changed and then it'll be good to go we know electrically this thing works like it's supposed to so one more time let me take you underneath and just to confirm again where this leak is and then we'll end this thing cool evap core 100% no question about it that drain tube I know come over my right shoulder here Kaylee the drain tube it comes out comes out there and then it wraps around and goes over there and that's the - that - where we were is is connected it's this piece right here so that is the drain tube and I guess the only other thing I could say about doing that particular tech you do not want to have the air-conditioning running when you do the drain tube check what I have found with this with these leak detectors at least mine is any airflow at all watch so even my breasts if there is airflow can make this tool go off and what I found in the past when you do leak checks is I'd have the air-conditioning running have the blower running and getting false positives from the drain tube so make sure everything is off and that's why I kept rechecking it find a leak it goes off pull it into fresh air go back to it make sure you don't bump it too and that's another one that I've been misled by when you're you're doing sex you bump the tool of course it doesn't do it now but I've had it too we're bumping the tool can give you false positives as well so again soap and water is great we can check the whole system the two main places you cannot check evap core compressor shaft seal then don't forget about your service ports make sure that those are okay check your gauges make sure those are okay we're going to call this a wrap I'm going to have Pete evac this with his machine and do the repair we're done thanks for joining me guys don't forget to check out my website scanner dander calm and don't forget to read the description of this video where I'll post links for some other related AC repair videos that I've done and then of course my scanner Dan or premium channel which is where I invite you into my classroom at Rosedale Tech and I can teach you to be a drivability diagnostic technician so thanks again guys I'll see you next time [Applause] changing

Channel: ScannerDanner

Views: 757,666

Keywords: engine performance diagnostics, technician training, auto technician training, rosedale tech, auto repair, ASE L1, how-to, DIY auto repair, air conditioning test, A/C leak test, A/C blows warm, compressor, compressor clutch, no pressure, evaporator core leak, electronic leak detector, A/C diagnosis and repair, Honda, air blows warm

Id: m5XM5Ak55gU

Length: 44min 55sec (2695 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 26 2017