AC radiator leak - is it fixable?

What a bunch of ####. My wife says, good thing We got one with a hole. Lol not funny, your predicament.Its heating up down here, we’re right behind you , loading now for Pittsburgh, yuk! They should flip you a compressor , probably a free air drier, at least a discount of some sort.I guess Ridgeline was right about them. Used to be a family operation, Like Detroit Radiator, both gone to the ( big) Dogs. Good luck

 

I just got my A/C up and running again. Thought I had a hole in the condenser, so I bought one from KW ($105). I also bought a new dryer/accumulator. Turned out that my leak was at the compressor at the low pressure line. I fixed that, vacuumed the system with the stuff I bought (vacuum pump, manifold gauges and a dozen cans of R134a - $100) off Craigslist and left it with the gauges connected overnight. It held vacuum, so I added pag oil and charged the system. Cools down to about 40° at the vent, just like it used to. Cool thing is, I have a spare condenser and dryer/accumulator now. Those two pieces together cost me about $135. Oh, and KW sold me the 12oz cans of R134a for less than $4.50 each.
The icing on the cake is that the vacuum pump I bought is an older model Gast with a 1/3 hp motor. The pump, new, without the motor sells for about $650. All in all, I figure I did pretty good, even though the manifold gauges are cheapies. It's about time I got a break after the series of catastrophic failures I've had over the last 1.5 years.

 

So the Cullman radiator people did have the condenser with proper holes after all, exchanged it for free obviously. I installed it and filled it up with walmart $5 cans of 134a as a test - and it works! Gauges in the green and blows cold-ish. It's a bit weak, I gotta do a proper evac and recharge sometime later, but at least my compressor isn't blown after all. I was not optimistic, because everything I read about the blow off valve activating talked about it being a fatal event. But that was about car compressors, I guess the truck ones are hardier.

Anyway, that's the end of this fix-and-learn adventure. For now.

 

Wow, you guys are chasing me! I'm going to New Castle PA, just north of the Pit. If you pass a blue landstar cascadia with an Alaska plate, wave and say hi.

 

Daang, Kenworth parts are way cheap. And they probably even have the correct number of holes. Freightliner doesn't even carry 134a.

 

My company gets a discount at our local KW dealership. I was surprised when I got the refrigerant cheaper than I can at Walmart.

 

I’m glad they got it straightened out. All dealers are different on stock and prices. The Freightliner in Slidell sells 134 pretty cheap. Best overall is Lima IMO. Also Monroeville Ohio, They came to Fremont once, I had a timing sensor go bad while in the dock, about 12 yrs ago. They Fixed Me up cheap. Been loyal ever since. Woke up today and the headliner in bunk was hanging down. Lol. That’s a cheap Freightliner for you. The whole middle held by Velcro. Always something!!

 

I'll have to keep that in mind about Lika freightliner, I'm through Ohio a lot, and Youngstown freightliner is absolutely terrible.

Hey, would you happen to know what the manifold gauge pressures should be for a normally functioning big truck AC? I'm reading a lot of car-specific diagnostic info and mostly they say high 150, low 30... but I'm not sure if big truck would have higher pressure?

 

The high side depends on the ambient temperature and the amount of air flowing across your condenser. The low side will fluctuate according to the evaporator temperature on a system with an expansion valve. I wouldn't concern yourself with pressures unless you're having a performance problem. If you're curious, consult a pressure temperature chart for r134a.

If it's 85 degrees outside and you're getting 40 degrees out the vents with it on recirculate, call it good.

 

Hmm, that's interesting. I guess the pressures are universal across AC systems, regardless of if it's a car or a semi truck? I guess that makes sense, it's the same thermodynamics and expansion points and other physics stuff, regardless of the size of the system.

I'm definitely not getting 40 on 85, 60 maybe. But I didn't evac and I didn't replace the air dryer, this was kind of a test run to make sure my compressor survived. Hopefully after I do those things it's gonna be ice cold.