Air con regas kits ?

[Stixy]

Air con regas kits  

 

do they work are they any good ?

 

 

[Richard]

I used one on my Xantia years ago. It worked well, but at the time it was £80 or more for a garage to do it. I probably wouldn't bother now that you can get it done for£40.

[davidfowler2000]

Halfords. £20 for the trigger, £35 for the bottle but you get a £10 refund on empty bottles. They seem to be a good idea if you just want to keep it topped up year on year. Go for a Kwik Fit £49 recharge if you need a full regas though. A full regas could take 2 or 3 bottles from halfords and Kwik Fit won't charge a penny if they can't get the air con below a certain threshold.

[mrbenn]

I used one on my Xantia years ago. It worked well, but at the time it was £80 or more for a garage to do it. I probably wouldn't bother now that you can get it done for£40.

 

This but with a Scorpio rather than a Xantia.

[gtd2000]

R134a refill kits are ludicrously expensive in the UK.

 

I used to be able to pick up cans for around $5 in the USA and a hose with trigger was around $15 and in my experience, you only need a few squirts of the trigger to get the cooling back into the system

 

Now the prices have also gone up in the USA and if you can get one for less than $10 you are doing well - I bought 6 cans at $7 each last year, to stockpile some for future use.

 

Now, getting back to the UK, the best method is to get your car re-gassed in the winter when nobody needs AC. Kwik Fit and ATS etc. usually have deals around the £25 mark.

 

That's much cheaper than the Halfrauds BS prices

 

The AC condenser went on my mum's KIA Picanto earlier this year - she'd had the system re-gassed for the first time in 10 years in November when she had her MOT done. As the weather was warming up in May she complained that the AC was not cold so I booked it into ATS to get the system checked.

 

Unfortunately the condenser was split and had to be replaced, so a new one was sourced on eBay for £83 and ATS re-gassed the system for free

[RichardMoss]

I have bought kits and cans on ebay and they've been successful by and large

[Negative Creep]

I went to Kwik Fit and for £50 it worked brilliantly. For about 2 weeks.

[Guest Lord Sward]

Is there not a danger of over charging the system?

[cort1977]

I went to Kwik Fit and for £50 it worked brilliantly. For about 2 weeks.

This.   I've always thought that if the system needs charging then there is a leak somewhere which should be found and rectified before recharging the system.   Depending on the leak then a re-charge each year might work OK but it's not treating the cause just the symptom.

[Mr_Bo11ox]

Think Halfords are doing it for £35 at the moment (spesh offer)

[Honey Badger]

Have a look at a local car a/c place, there's a good mobile one in Northampton that comes out services and checks the system for £39 with an extra £20 for a regas on top, that must be better than taking it to some feckwit at halfords or twit fit.

[Guest Lord Sward]

A mate of mine used Halfrauds the other week, he wouldn't wait for my man in the trade.  Newish Quasqai, so it had to have a leak somewhere.  Halfrauds simply blast the gas in, claim no leaks and charge him.  It lasted 2 days, max.  No dye was added to assist in finding the leak.  Now to me, that is genuinely criminal.  I cannot simply discharge air-con gas into the atmosphere to aid a repair.  Yet Halfrauds can stick in a load of gas in  a system which almost certain had (and did have) a leak.

 

Now I'm no engineer, but I though if you encountered a system which was fully discharged, you first had to pressurise it with CO2 to see if it held a charge?  Then it it held, you added the refrigerant with a dye for reference.

[twosmoke300]

The chap I use uses nitrogen to leak test the system

[Shep Shepherd]

I got TV2's aircon to blow cold again using an eBay recharging kit last spring. It was still working when I scrapped the car this April.

 

Pawnote: Does anyone know how to get an R12 aircon system to work with R134a, as I'd really like to get The Wentworth's aircon working again?

[Brooklands]

I used a great mobile guy for our 9-5 Aero estate - Ace air conditioning (covering a 10 mile radius of Bury St Edmunds). My 9000 is off to Leelac Saab to have it's long since dead acc fixed in the next couple of weeks - can't wait to have it working again!

[mat_the_cat]

Pawnote: Does anyone know how to get an R12 aircon system to work with R134a, as I'd really like to get The Wentworth's aircon working again?

 

I'm using RS24 (or R426a) in an R12 system on my BX. It's basically R134a with additive to make it compatible with the mineral oil and seals used in an R12 system. When I installed it I changed all the seals to the green neoprene R134a compatible type, and planned to replace the mineral oil with PAG. But the place who refilled it (8 years ago now!) said it wasn't necessary, and just put in RS24.

 

With hindsight, I wouldn't go back there as they didn't weigh the charge, just added refrigerant until the system blew acceptably cold. Although it works well, so may be an 'acceptable' bodge method? At least they leak checked beforehand!

[Shep Shepherd]

^

 

Thanks. That's really useful to know