So, I bought another truck. Found a 97 F-250 in a barn in TN. Powerstroke, 110,000 original miles. Husband died- I bought it and brought it back to south florida.
I've had to fix a couple things so far due to the thing sitting for a few years and I'm wondering if this is going to be one of them.
The a/c will not turn on. The clutch didn't engage at all. I went ahead and checked and I had 0 pressure. Weird. So I pulled a vacuum for 30 min and it held at -20 for an hour. cool. I then went to add r134. It took it up very very slowly, but once it hit 45 psi on the low side the clutch kicked in...for 1.5 seconds. then when the low hits 22 psi, it turns off, over and over. I let it do this 20 or so times hoping to pull in enough 134 to normalize, but it won't. The high side is around 90-120 depending. I'm not sure what the issue is to be honest. It has about 1/3 of the 134 that it's supposed to get, but it won't take anymore.
Please help.
You just need to add more 134. You might need to warm your bottle up - as you pull refrigerant out of it the bottle will get very cold and so less refrigerant will come out of it. Take your time, and get the pressure up to 35 psi while the compressor is running. It might take a while. Are you working from a big bottle or the little handheld ones?
dculberson said:
You just need to add more 134. You might need to warm your bottle up - as you pull refrigerant out of it the bottle will get very cold and so less refrigerant will come out of it. Take your time, and get the pressure up to 35 psi while the compressor is running. It might take a while. Are you working from a big bottle or the little handheld ones?
A little bottle. It's 78 here so it should be doing ok...I've had the bottle on for over an hour. I even switched to another bottle. I eventually got the pressure up to 80 on the low side, but it still goes crazy when I run the a/c.
What ^^ he said.
Sometimes Fords can be pretty slow to take refrigerant.
You also might have a bad fill hose. I just had to replace my gauge set because of fitting that wouldn't feed refrigerant into the system.
I've occasionally taken to flipping the tank over for a second or 2 at a shot to feed liquid (don't feed too much in one shot, a slug of liquid into the compressor is bad) to get a system to take more refrigerant. It usually helps.
I agree with what the others are saying, it's just not charged enough to avoid hitting the low pressure cutoff when it cycles on.
Shake the little bottle and see if there's any liquid left in it. How many bottles have you put in? If they're empty add up the net weight of each one (printed on the bottle, often 12oz) and see if it's near the coolant charge that should be in the truck. It looks like that truck will take a total of 38 ounces. That means at least three 12oz cans should go in until they're completely empty - no slosh when you shake them at all. That would get you 36oz and should be "close enough" to work consistently. Have you put that much in yet?
Also, yes, I admit to what rslifkin says, sometimes slugging a bit of liquid into the system works better. Just not very much - you don't want liquid r134a hitting the compressor.
Ok. I’ll get back on it. I put about 1 total bottle in so far. A/c on when filling or no? I’m worried about short cycles killing the compressor. Also, I’m filling the low side, right?
Yep, A/C has to be on for all but the first little bit of filling. And yes, fill on the low side.
Don't worry about the short cycles killing the compressor. It shouldn't be enough to do anything significant over its lifetime.
Y’all were right! Can just needed a little shake. I think the first can was messed up, never saw anything in the sight glass. I put about 3 cans in and it seems to be ice cold. Thanks y’all.
Went on a drive with the family, the truck could freeze out an eskimo. very good result.
