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Resolution to my poor a/c performance

Cutlass84 on Tue July 29, 2008 8:40 AM User is offline

Year: 1995
Make: Dodge
Model: Dakota
Engine Size: 318
Refrigerant Type: r134a

Just thought i'd follow up for others future reference.

After replacing my compressor, condenser, orfice tube, drier, and cleaning my evaporator I was experiencing very odd symptoms with my a/c system. It would show normal readings on the guages after adding only about 12 oz out of a 1.75lb charge. The low side line would get cold, but the high side would be blistering hot. This lead me to believe that SOMETHING was taking up the missing volume in my a/c system, which I suspected to be excess oil.

So, yesterday afternoon I brought a gallon of denatured alcohol home and removed all of the lines. I funneled the alcohol into the evaporator and condensor until they overflowed and blew them out with compressed air. I flushed the lines, as well as blew my new drier of quite a substantial quantity of oil. I capped the drier off while I let the system sit and dry after a thorough blow out with compressed air. I then vacuumed everything down for about an hour and recharged. I am now seeing ~37-40* at the vent even at idle.

I believe this happened because every can of refrigerant you see in the stores aside from plain old r134 typically contains a 2oz oil charge. I think the prior owner of the truck kept topping off with this instead of fixing a leak creating this monster. I replaced one component at a time so I think every new component was getting saturated with oil that was trapped throughout the system. Anyway, I hope this can help someone with a similar problem.

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'95 Dakota sport - 318/5 speed/2wd
'84 Cutlass - Olds 455/700r4

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