How to Recharge Your Car's AC System (Fast and Easy)

hey guys chrisfix here and today I'm going to show you how to easily make your air conditioning cold again by doing a quick recharge for your AC system I'll be using one of these do-it-yourself refrigerant kits that you could get at your local store or purchase online I'll leave a link in the description to where you can get your own this AC pro kit has everything you need to do the job it has the hose and coupler to attach to your air conditioning system and then it also has the pressure gauge so you can read the pressure in the air conditioning system so you don't overfill it or underfill it this is one of the easiest jobs you could do on your car and get really rewarding results especially in this summer heat we have a 2000 BMW here but this process will work in any car that uses r134a refrigerant r134a is a type of refrigerant which is now used instead of the old r12 refrigerant r134a could be found in vehicles built in the 1990s and newer to see what your car uses you could use the owner's manual or you can find the sticker that's either located on the front frame right up over here somewhere or on the top of the hood and you can see right here these two stickers you go look over here and it says r134a in this car the a/c system is not cold at all and the owner told me a recharge lasts over a year which means that there's a really really small leak which is usually a bad seal somewhere it's not worth it to spend thousands of dollars to find the leak and then replace AC components so instead we're going to be using a refrigerant that has a sealer in it now the reason why I chose this AC system kit is because the sealer in this kit isn't the typical sealer it's not a goo it's not thick this sealer is more of a conditioner it conditions the rubber gaskets so those rubber gaskets and o-rings swell and clog the most common leaks so now that you know the basics on the refrigerant and what to use let me go show you how to recharge your AC system so the first thing that you want to do is we want to connect our AC kit to the low pressure service port with this adapter so we have to find the low pressure service port now the low pressure service port is going to be on one of the air conditioning lines you can see these two air conditioning lines coming in right here well now you just want to follow the lines actually right here you can see is one of the service ports in this case this is the high pressure service port which we can't use sometimes the high pressure service port has an H on the cap in this case we don't have any lettering on the cat but don't worry if you're not sure which is a high pressure which is low pressure your adapter here only fits on the low pressure port you can see here it won't fit on the high pressure port so you can't mess that up so we'll put that cap back on and now we're going to follow our AC lines you can see them right there it goes into the cabin and then actually right up here here's the low-pressure service port again sometimes you have an L on the cap indicating that's the low-pressure port in this case we don't but you take the cap off and just grab your adapter and all you have to do is you pull back on this like that and then you push down and then that's connected and you can see it fits so it fits on our low-pressure port no problem and I'm just going to disconnect our air conditioning refrigerant kit real quick because we don't need it attached right now that was just to show you that our adapter fit on the low pressure line you don't actually have to connect it right away and this is one example of how to find your high and low pressure ports but let me show you my truck to give you an idea of another vehicle and where to find the high and low pressure ports on that vehicle this is my truck so let's check it out so on this vehicle what you want to do is you want to find the AC compressor and after you find the air conditioning compressor you want to follow the AC lines actually I want to look right here here's the high-pressure AC line and you can see here's that service port which is capped then it goes into the condenser and then it comes back around here and you can see here's that nice thick AC line this is going to the accumulator which removes the moisture from the refrigerant and here's the other cap so this is our low-pressure cap so we could fill my truck from right here alright so now we know how to find our low-pressure port the next step is we have to figure out what temperature it is outside in this case we have about ninety degrees Fahrenheit and what you do is you adjust this gauge right here and you can see inside here there's all temperatures at the bottom and you want to point that arrow in the middle right to about 90 degrees which is right about there so it's going to be between 45 and 55 psi in that green and that's where we're going to want to build up our pressure too now we can go in the car and then turn the car on and I have my temperature gauge right here I'm going to put in the vent so we know what temperature the air coming out of the vent is now I'm going to come down here and I want to make sure that I have the air conditioner on you can see this is climate control so I have the temperature all the way down as cold as it could go if you have the knobs just switch the knobs as cold as it'll go and then you want to make sure you hit this button right here and that turns the AC on then we can watch this so actually let the car run for a little while and you can see got down to seventy seven and a half degrees with the AC on and that's just not cold enough so let's go charge it up and I'm going to show you how to check to make sure the compressor is running so right down here is the compressor and we just want to make sure it's on I could actually see it spinning you can see the front of that pulley spinning that means the compressor clutch is on I'm going to go in the car real quick and I'm going to shut it off and you'll see how it stops so right there you can see it stops and it's off I'm going to turn it on and you can see right there it clicked back on so in this case our compressor is running which is a good thing means our compressor is working if yours isn't running that's not necessarily bad it could mean that the pressure is really low and you need to boost it with the refrigerant so don't worry about that yet let's move to the next step the next step is get your safety goggles on and get your gloves on so that the refrigerant doesn't hit your hands and cause frostbite and also doesn't get in your eyes and blonde you now we want to unscrew the top of our bottle to remove the plastic shipping disc and then screw the gauge and trigger back on to pierce the can so it could actually use it give the can a good shake to mix up all the refrigerant with its additives so we get it evenly distributed now attach the coupler to the low pressure port by pulling back on the collar and pushing the coupler on then wiggle it around so you know for sure that it's secure good now is the part you can see the black needle at around 40 psi we need it to be at about 50 psi if your needles in the red then don't charge the system because there's something wrong and odds are the compressor isn't running and that's why you're not getting the cold air but if you're in the white or it like in this case you're in the green you're good to go so squeeze the trigger and let's charge this baby up as you hold the trigger turn the bottle from side to side in the 12 to 3 o'clock position to evenly distribute the contents in the bottom half to about 10 seconds or so release the trigger and check the pressure to make sure you're not over filling it I'm going to repeat this a few times until our pressure is in the middle of the two red lines at about 50 psi at this point your compressor should be running if it's not stop and figure out why it could be as simple as something like the AC compressor fuse just needs to be replaced perfect this looks good with the pressure being in the middle at about 50 psi and now we could remove the coupler just pull back on the collar and pull it off the service port remember to screw the cap back on the low-pressure service port to seal it up good all right so now we're back in the car and check this out 43 degrees Fahrenheit that is perfect the AC system is working great and that's a job well done so there we go hopefully this video was helpful if it was remember to give it a thumbs up also if you're not subscribed consider subscribing up on the screen are going to be other air conditioning related videos you could click on the screen or find the links to those videos in the description below also in the description are going to be the links for any of the tools and products I use in this video

Channel: ChrisFix

Views: 8,054,530

Keywords: Air Conditioning (Industry), AC Pro, ac, a/c, how to recharge your ac system, ac system, cold air, recharge ac in car, how to recharge an AC system, how to recharge your car ac system, how to recharge a/c system, recharge ac system, cold air in car, no ac in car, Fixing a car air conditioner, fixing a car that doesn't blow cold air, not blowing cold air

Id: SHg2xRMnM38

Length: 7min 58sec (478 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 20 2015