How To 'Top Off' Your AC System

greetings viewers ere at the car guy here it's summertime and it's hot and the air conditioning in the GSR that I just got isn't quite working up to par so I thought I'd make a video about how to top off your a/c system I'm going to start this out by saying okay ac work for the DIY it's kind of a slippery slope it requires a lot of specialized skills and sometimes specialized tools and he kind of got to know what you're doing you can't just go at this so I'm posting links in the description to videos I've done previously about how AC systems operate also a video about AC performance diagnosis so you can see how well your AC is working but if your AC is working and it's not quite getting as cool as it used to this video may help you that's what I'm putting this up for so please keep that in mind but if you have other issues the AC isn't coming on or any of that kind of stuff this will not help you so see the description for additional information there let's get started oh yeah safety glasses we're going to be working on AC we want these first let's start with a little bit of that performance testing that I told you I had a video link to in the description as you can see here it's about 95 H degrees in the shop today so it's pretty toasty so we'll be able to get a pretty good idea of how well the air conditioning can work relative humidity also has a lot to do with this and I can't really say what it is now I'd say probably any eighty percent ish somewhere around that area it's not necessarily high humidity but there is a certain amount of humidity the more humid it is the less efficient your air conditioning is going to be so the expectations as far as the temperature difference that you're going to see are going to be based on one how hot it is and two how much humidity but for a baseline let's see what the a/c is doing now before we get started I'm just going to turn this on low I've got it on these Center vents slide this in here we'll just rev the engine to about 2500 rpm well it looks like we're doing really really good right now all things considered it looks like it's come down to about 49 degrees which honestly is now bordering on excellent but I'm going to try to see if I can get it a little better and if nothing else I'm going to show you what to look for that could possibly make it better over here on the bench I have a set of AC gauges these are set up for 134 which anything made after 96 is going to have a 130 for a system they have these special ends on them checking high and low pressure and also the charge hose is what that is sometimes called this measures the pressures inside the AC system and if you follow those links in the description to those videos about this you can see why that is important because the AC works on the pressures within the system going from a high pressure to a low pressure this is the high side this is the low side this is what I recommend you do this with over something like this which as you can see has no gauge on it now some of these do come with gauges on them as far as when you go to recharge these or just cans a refrigerant here that you can purchase at your local auto parts store now the reason why I'm advocating using a gauge set over something like this or even something like this with just a low pressure gauge is I like to know what's going on in the high pressure as well as the low pressure any of these just come with low pressure gauges one more thing as far as topping it off and the type of refrigerant you're using there are many varieties that you can choose from at the auto parts store however I've gotten to a point to where I just use straight refrigerant and I do this a lot at the shop I'm not advocating that you get something like this but personally I've come to like the fact that this is just pure refrigerant as opposed to these other things that may have sealers or dyes or oil or other other things in here that could possibly adversely affect some of the refrigerant or oils or dyes that are already in the system it's just been my experience so I prefer just straight refrigerant over anything else step one however is we're going to hook up our gauges and observe the pressures that we have inside the system while it's running you may have noticed that I've lowered the hood a bit on the Integra and part of the reason is is so I have a better place to hang the gauge set once you have the gauges in this position the next thing to do is to find the high and low ports on the system and on this car we've got a low side here and a high side here and we'll remove the caps and attach the gauge set before we get started make sure both of these valves are closed the low side port is going to be on a big hose I call it and the high side port is usually on a small hose but you kind of can't mix these up because they make these fittings here only go on one way so that's helpful don't lose the caps and with these you can pull up on the coupler sometimes you can just push them right down but I just pull up on the coupler and make sure it's locked into place next I'm going to start to slowly run the valve in and I'm going to keep an eye on the gauge and as soon as the gauge starts to move I want to stop because if you run this all the way down there's a chance that you could damage the valve inside of here and you do not want to do that because once you disconnect everything it could cause a leak therefore you want to run this down slowly until you see the needle move on the gauge alright as I said I'm going to slowly turn the knob until I see the needle move once I see the needle move I'm going to stop you don't need to run it all the way down once that needle moves it means that the hose is connected and you are tied into the system going to do the same thing on the high side once again just turn the knob slowly until you see the gauge move that time it didn't move all that much now that the gauges are hooked up and tied into the system I'm going to start it up and observe the pressures so that wasn't all the way in that seems more reasonable these pressures don't look that bad but you don't want to look at them just a tile you want to rev it up one of the reasons why I said that I wanted to look at the high side as well as the low side because the difference between this pressure and this pressure what's going to make it colder on a day like today where it's about 90 some degrees I mean the humidity is high but not too high I want to see high side pressures somewhere above 200 somewhere 200 250 range and the low side well that should actually it looks pretty good where it is it'll probably go down to about 20 when I rev the engine so I'm going to do that now and we'll see where they end up so we didn't quite reach 200 one real important check before you really get into this is make sure bulk cooling fans are functioning especially the smaller or condenser fan if those aren't working they could be the reason why your AC isn't performing as good as it should as I said I'd like to get these pressures up above 200 on the high side and I'm going to add a little bit of refrigerant in order to accomplish that I'm going to do that through the charge hose here in the center now I'm going to be using this large tank of refrigerate here as I said I like to use refrigerant that doesn't have any additives to it but if you're at the auto parts store and you want these smaller cans which are much more economical you can use one of these piercing type valves this can actually start it out like this and you screw this valve down on top of here and then you run this in and when you do it pierces the top of the cannon allows the refrigerant to come out some cans like this one here have this hose set up well even with this type of setup you can unscrew this and you have the same type of end on here you could use this same valve to pierce this can some cans are also shorter than this these are some of the big cans but some cans are about half this size and if you just type topping it off maybe a small can might be better for you so this valve has a needle that comes down and pierces the top of the can so you can get access to the refrigerant inside then you hook this fitting up to the charge hose so if I was going to use this valve I'd run the needle all the way out screw this on the top of the can then I've run the needle all the way in hook it up to my charge hoes then I'd unscrew this again after the needle was run in and then refrigerant would be free to flow through the charge holes into the manifold gage but I'm using this large canister of refrigerant so I'll just take my charge hose and hook it directly up to that and make sure that it has a plastic o-ring or something like that down in there because if it doesn't this stuff can leak out so I'm going to run this in and then I'm going to open the valve now I'm going to take this can and turn it upside down because a liquid refrigerant will settle towards the bottom if I was charging with one of these I would also hold the can upside down while I charged it now refrigerant is free to flow through the charge hose into the manifold gauge set however this entire hose is now filled with air and we want to purge that air in order to do that I'm just going to loosen up this fitting you can also push this Schrader valve but I've just got in the habit of loosening up this fitting here until I seen refrigerant coming out then I'll close it up so just a small amount just want to purge the air out of the hose it gets cold you see that refrigerant come out that's all you need to do so now you know where you have refrigerant going up into the manifold gauge this next part is where it gets tricky because you don't know exactly how much refrigerant is going into the system you only want to do it in small amounts so I'm going to open up the low side valve never charge on the high side only the low side open up the low side valve just for a few seconds let a little bit of refrigerant go in then I'm going to recheck the pressures here we go a little bit of refrigerant going in here you see it go through the sight glass also that's all I'm going to add for now you can already see that the high side is starting to come up a little bit more now I'm going to raise the RPM to that 2500 and see where my high side gauges okay it looks like we topped out like almost 225 which is way better than what it was so now let's go check that vent temperature and see if that got any better okay I can already see that it's a little bit better than it was before and I haven't even started revving it up before we got down to about 49 degrees it's hard to see in the blue there but let's raise the RPMs and see how low we can get it to go it's hard to see take a closer look at this actually look to me like I got it down to just a little above 40 it does feel better I can say that is a slight improvement over what we have but with air conditioning a slight improvement is still an improvement you will likely get more dramatic results if your system is a little bit lower but I'm actually pretty happy with this now as I said I'm happy with this there comes a point where it's diminishing returns you only want to add a little bit at a time if you add too much it can be just as bad as not having enough aside from that I'm going to take all the refrigerant that's still in this hose and put that into the system so that's a little bit of an extra charge that we'll have this is how I'm going to do that first I'm going to close off the valve on the tank now I'm going to open the low-side valve and it'll draw any of the refrigerant that's still in the hose back into this system which there really wasn't much at all and close that off and now I can be reasonably certain that all refrigerant is out of the hose if you're using this type which you probably are run the valve all the way back down in that will seal the can back up and you can do the exact same thing that I just did with the big can here now as you'll see when I remove this hose you won't have a bunch of stuff sprayed out if I didn't do that whatever was left in the hose would spray out they're still going up to 225 on the high side in just a little bit like 1918 around that on the low side pretty happy with that and we saw what the result was inside the car now that we're topped off and satisfied with the pressures we're going to disconnect the gauge set from the system I've got a couple of notes here for you so with this low side fitting you turn it counterclockwise until it bottoms out it doesn't matter if you bottomed it out here then pull back on the coupling and it will release from line now here's the note I want to leave with you what you may notice is you may see refrigerant bubbling out of here when you disconnect the gauges that's okay for a little while if it continues on past five minutes or so then you probably still have a leak in there but if you don't see anything like I don't see anything here on this you're probably okay but initially when you first remove the valves it's not uncommon to have a little bit of refrigerant still bubbling up here with these Schrader valves what happens sometimes is they hang open a little bit and cause very small tiny leaks what I do to help prevent this is I flip the valves before I put the caps on so in other words I'll go in with a small pocket screwdriver like what I have here just very quickly clear the valve and that usually helps reset the valve into the proper position if there's any kind of debris or anything that might have gotten introduced into the system it could hold the valve in slightly that little blipping is I call it helps clear that Valve out helps prevent leaks do the same thing with a high side fitting and screw it all the way the high side is going to have some pressure behind it so I might kick back at you a little bit once again I would look for any of that boiling that might be happening I don't see it but all the same going to blip the valve real quick now I'm going to put the caps back on these help keep debris out they do seal a little bit shut the engine off we're all set well there you have it a step-by-step on how to get your AC to work a little bit better can't stress enough out how your AC system needs to be functioning properly to start with before you begin as I said if you get a manifold gauge set like this you can look at the pressures I like to see a high side pressure on a warm day like today up above 200 we got it to 225 we actually got a couple more degrees out of that so there wasn't much that leaked out also added in in small amounts once again I'll mention that I have links in the description to additional videos I have about the operation of an AC system how to check for leaks how to charge it from nothing performance testing all that stuff including an article that I wrote on my website about checking out any other HVAC problems AC can get kind of tricky can get kind of dicey so I'm hoping this helps but if you get in over your head I recommend taking it to a professional anyway I'm going to put a link in the description to air at the carga comm in addition to all the other information that I mentioned Google+ Facebook Twitter Instagram if you wish to connect with me socially close each of my videos with of course be safe have fun stay dirty and cool I'll see you next time thanks for watching

Channel: EricTheCarGuy

Views: 1,940,413

Keywords: how to top off your AC system, how to top of your air conditioning system, how to make your AC blow cold, how to get your AC to work better, Air conditioning, AC not blowing cold, how to fix warm AC, how to make your AC better, air conditioning tune up, how to get cold air from your AC, AC repair, automotive education, how to auto repair, EricTheCarGuy, Eric the car guy, ETCG

Id: ey7Vhm9ZI_U

Length: 16min 14sec (974 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 27 2016