Recharge Your Car's Air Conditioning (A/C) in 5 Minutes

hi there I'm Nils both learned to DIY and if you've got problems with your air conditioning like we have in this vehicle I'm going to show you how you can fix most cases in about five minutes and for about twenty-five dollars okay we're in the truck now the air conditioning is on and we've got this little high-tech thermostat here pulled up and you can see this thing is cranking at about a hundred degrees so this is not pleasant and as you can see over down here the actual AC is on full it's on high it's just not cooling anything down at all so this is what we're gonna aim to resolve here so the first thing we want to do is get the truck or car running with the AC on on full on all the way cool for three to four minutes before we get started so now that we've diagnosed the problem and just one caveat here the problem could be I experienced it in my vehicle we're actually the left side of the vents did not blow cold air but the right side did and that turned out to be the same issue what we're gonna do is we're gonna fill up the refrigerant you can buy this at a Walmart or you can buy it at the auto parts store really lots of places and it's only typically between eighteen and thirty five dollars so for twenty-five dollars you can certainly find the ones that you need I think they're all pretty similar but some claimed to have different qualities or characteristics I've tried the 18 we're going to try the the more expensive 30 dollar stuff now each of them should come with a gauge you want to make sure that you've got a gauge on there and the first thing we're going to do is test the level of refrigerant in the vehicle first so we'll pop the hood here all right then if you'll follow me over here right down in here now in the hood of your vehicle what we're looking for here is a low and a high pressure system so you can kind of see right here we've got a high and a low and H and an L and you're looking for aluminum tubing or aluminum pipes and you're gonna have one that's a thicker that's your low pressure and a smaller diameter one that's your high pressure we're gonna leave the high pressure alone we're gonna locate this low pressure we're gonna take this off and this is again once your AC has been running for three or four minutes or more and set that cap aside and then I've got my gauge here that I'm gonna use now this works just like an a typical air compressor hose I've got a sleeve that I'm gonna pull back and attach right on here pull that back and then it should snap in like that and then I can see it's just pretty much bottomed doubt here I'm just sitting down at maybe 10 or 12 or something like that so nothing's actually happening I don't have any AC actually pumping through the system really what we want to do is get up in this blue area and if you look on the outside of the can you're gonna find some directions as to what pressure you want that to be which is determined by the temperature the ambient temperature of the vehicle and since it's a really hot day we're gonna actually need to be up in the 50 or 55 range today so I'm gonna give it up to that point I'll take this off and I'll set that aside I'm going to take my my coolant here my refrigerant and give that a good shaking this stuff actually has to be shaken up pretty vigorously okay and then I'm gonna thread on there might be a little shipping tab on here that you have to pull off depending on the set you get but this is just going to puncture the seal right here so I'm going to thread this on I can get it yeah there we go engaged all right I'm gonna kind of keep shaking this they they iterate many times you've got to kind of shake this thing throughout the whole process now that we've got it on I'm gonna connect it again okay I'm on there I should have a reading sorry this is kind of upside down a little bit there we go okay so it's there I'm going to go ahead and give it a squeeze and I'm going to rotate this between about 12 o'clock like this and three o'clock down here and kind of kind of shaking it all the way through okay there goes some you hear that there's air conditioning that's a good sound okay we're still pretty low not much happening I think I'm going to end up using most of this can today gives a good shake oh look at that okay now we're up in the Blue Zone so we've got some progress here let's shake this some more back between our 12 and our three okay and at resting we're at about 45 here we want to be in about 50 psi somewhere between 50 and 55 because it's about 95 degrees out here and I'm at my low 40s so I'm just going to give this a little bit more again continuing to shake it a little more going in here and now we're up closer to fifty kind of rotating this again and I would still at 45 or so I might be about out of a refrigerant might actually need to buy another can for this because it was so low yeah actually can kind of feel this moving a little bit I think that's about it I think that's all I've got but even just being up 45 I think we're going to be okay so what I'm going to do next is I'm going to pop this back off just do everything in the reverse order take my lid put that back on Mike and is now empty so this is useless now I'm gonna hop inside we're gonna check to see if we've got some cold air coming out Hey look at that okay we are in a much better spot now so I don't know if you can see this very well let's see there we go we are getting somewhere in the neighborhood of sixty five degrees now instead of the hundred that we were getting and I don't know if that's actually very accurate this feels pretty nice in here the temperature is pretty decent again the air conditioning is cranked pretty well and this is actually blowing out a nice cold air we're also in a 21 year old vehicle so that probably plays into it somewhat but this is a night and day difference so again if you've got a problem with your air conditioning whether it's on one side or both this is likely what the issue is especially if you have a vehicle that's been around for a few years then just check that refrigerant check the pressure before you do it and then put the refrigerant back into it up to the recommended pressure and give it a try for about 25 bucks in just a few minutes of your time it's definitely worth taking a stab at okay we are all set so we've got air conditioning finally in this vehicle and like I said pretty inexpensive and pretty quick so I'm gonna close this guy up and all it took was just our can of refrigerant here to get the job done always make sure to keep it well shaken and always make sure to check your pressure before you start so you don't want to overfill it because that's going to be a problem if you do that if you've got any questions or comments suggestions anything like that please leave those in the comments below if you're into DIY projects be sure to check us out on our website at learn to DIY comm just like you see here also you can follow us on social media I post little tips little projects and things that I'm working on we're on Instagram we're on Twitter and we're on Facebook and by all means subscribe we've got new videos coming out one to two times per month and hit that little bell if you want to be notified when we've got something new coming out thanks for watching my name is Nils and remember you can do it yo self

Channel: LRN2DIY

Views: 3,579,199

Keywords: nils, nilsandkatrina, how-to

Id: C_IhGe0Kip8

Length: 7min 54sec (474 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 17 2017