Finding and fixing an A/C Leak

welcome to realfixesrealfast docomond conditioning problem air conditioning leaks are often difficult to find mainly because the gas is invisible there's several methods we commonly use one of the older methods is with the sniffer now we still use that although it's not nearly as popular as it used to be it's actually good for detecting large leaks and then a more popular method these days is to use a die light you inject dye into the system because the gas is invisible so the dye will come out where the gas comes out and then you can use an ultraviolet light to highlight it so you can see where the leaks at now a problem that we run into quite often is you actually inject a d and you look around all over the place and you can't see any leaks where's it coming from but what if it's leaking around the shider valve often times that goes unnoticed because you have your valves actually attached there now even when you take your valves off the dye that you injected in is usually covered around that shraer valve so when you're using a die light it looks like it's leaking but most of the time you say Well it can't be that's D that's where we put the DI system well here's one way that you can actually confirm whether or not that shider is actually leaking and that's to add another tool to Your Arsenal it's called the listening ear it's a sound amplifier you basically put it on and you you have a wand and when you turn this on it greatly amplifies any sound that comes right through that point now why this is good is because you can put this right down on top of the shraer valve and it doesn't matter if there's dye there or not so you can actually do this even if you have not dyed the system but if the dye is in there you can put this on there and if there is noise there you can be sure that that's leaking we're going to illustrate that now again this is a sound amplifier how it basically works is you put it on you turn it on and then if you look down in here you can run this anywhere but if you look right at the fittings when there's a leak there you're going to hear a real loud noise now you can't hear that so I'm going to make it so that you can what I'm going to do is separate this and I'm going to put a sound recorder in between here so I'm actually going to record record this sound now so that you can see what I'm doing I will tell you this when you're using just earphones and the sound amplifier it's a lot more distinctive to sound it's not exactly the same used in the recorder but you're going to get a good idea of what it's like so now we're going to do it again where you can hear it recorded So you basically move over here and I'm going to go to the low side first and then I'm going to go to the high side back to the low side now you're also hearing a lot of background noise there's all kinds of background noise in here so now we're going to do it again with the sound recorder in there so that you can hear it so we're going to come in here and we're going to move the wand real close to the low side port and then we're going to go to the high side port come out in the open then back to the low side port so you can see real clearly right here we definitely have a leak and over here there's just a very faint leak so that's how you can actually confirm a leak at the shraer valves either either the high side or low side now this also works really good along some of the lines sometimes when you're having a hard time finding a leak you can move along a line and if it's a very very fine leak it'll often show up with a sound amplifier so we've got to change that shraer valve there's a way to do that without evacuating the whole system we're going to show you that now now they make a tool for this and you can do it for either the high or the low side they've got a different fitting for both ones now here's the tool kit for this it comes with a fitting for both the high or the low side we're going to switch to the high side fitting basically you attach the quick connect on the high side port and there's a valve with a black handle now that's in the open position but you notice up here you can pull this stem all the way out it'll pull only pull so far out and then you have to unscrew it once it's pulled out you can actually see that's where your shraer valve will actually go in so it should take your shraer out and put a new one in we'll show you how to work it now okay how you work this is you simply just hook up the quick connect to the port now you notice this you've got the black handle which is your shut off and then the stem on the top so if we try and turn that black handle right now it won't turn because the stem is in the way so you have to pull the stem all the way out when you're ready to take the shraer out and then that valve will actually turn so what you want to do first is have the valve in the up position like this and put your stem all the way down and engage the shraer valve and then twist it out then pull your stem all the way up and then you shut your valve off now there's a little finger screw right here that you can look loosen which will take your stem out and then you can see that the old shraer valve is right on the very end so we simply take that off okay we'll get the new shraer valve and you put that on the end of the stem you insert that back down the opening you screw down the bottom until it's tight and at that point you can open the valve and push your stem all the way back down screw the shraer valve back in place and then undo your disconnect so now you've got a new shraer valve in place and you did not have to discharge the air conditioning now we always like to change both straighter valves if one's leaking the other one may not be far behind so we're going to change to the low side Quick Connect [Music] [Music] and then it's the same procedure attach your low side Quick Connect push your stem all the way down and then you can unscrew the shraer valve pull your stem all the way up turn the valve to shut the freon gas off and then there's the shraer valve just put a new shraer valve on the end of the stem insert down to the hole once it's tight push the stem down you do have to open that Port so that the stem can travel get your shraer valve tight undo your disconnect and you've got brand new Shater valves so it's a handy little device allows you to actually change the shider valves without discharging the system of course at this point you'd want to use your listening ear again and to confirm it make sure it has sealed it off put your covers back on and you're all set that is so cool

Channel: realfixesrealfast

Views: 1,057,361

Keywords: air, conditioning, leak, a/c, testing, valve, auto, repair, diagnostics

Id: Cfm6m01FfeI

Length: 9min 39sec (579 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 28 2011