Long story short, I need to recover the 134a out of my suburban to change out a leaking heater core. Truck is inop for the easiest option of taking it to a shop for recovery. Don't make me all country fix it.
Halp.
Long story short, I need to recover the 134a out of my suburban to change out a leaking heater core. Truck is inop for the easiest option of taking it to a shop for recovery. Don't make me all country fix it.
Halp.
Empty/expired propane tank and some adapter fittings? That should get most of it out
In reply to Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) :
If I had one. I'm sure I could have macguyver from tractor supply. But I don't.
Oreilly's rents/free loans a pump/evac https://www.oreillyauto.com/store-services/rental-tools
In reply to John Welsh :
The only rental tool I've ever seen is a vacuum pump. Those will pull a vacuum on the lines, which is necessary, but they only output to the atmosphere, there's no option to connect any sort of container.
Propane tank will work if you can pull vacuum on it before filling. If you just let loose into a tank that is not under vacuum, you cannot reuse that refrigerant. You'll introduce air into the system when attempting to reuse it. In that case you now have a propane tank with refrigerant that needs to be disposed of, and you're not much better off.
In reply to Ranger50 :
If you absolutely positively have to do this yourself: Step 1, get the empty propane tank as Curtis recommended. Step 2, remove the existing valve and put a pipe nipple and a ball valve on top with a suitable refrigerant hose adaptor threaded into it. Step 3, borrow or rent a refrigeration vacuum pump and draw the "recovery" cylinder into a deep vacuum. Step 4, put the evacuated cylinder into an ice and water bath and then hook the hoses up to your truck, purge any air out of the hoses right up to the valve on inlet of the recovery cylinder and once done then open the valve on the cylinder and watch the gauges on the refrigerant manifold until you get the pressures on the truck side as low as you can.
I used the above method on a 3 ton water source heat pump back around 1989 / 1990 before small recovery machines were a thing but also before one way valves on refrigerant cylinders happened. I got all of the roughly 3 pounds of R-22 out of the unit to change a compressor and then put it back in once I'd finished installing it.
Since we were gutting so many cars at the house, I bought a recovery pump (Appion or some such) off of Marketplace and a recovery cylinder. I can't promise I'm doing it right, but I followed a video from FCP Euro on the YouTube before yanking the last three AC systems/M54's we've pulled at the house.
I'm like $350+ into the "tools" but helps me sleep better.
A fresh recovery bottle will be filled with Nitrogen (so "clean") and will already have the refrigerant fittings/valves you need, for what that's worth.
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