[DMCForum] Re: Walt... aircon & springs

["Walter Coe" <Whalt@xxxxxxx>]

> As for the springs, you can weigh them down if you wish.

Cool.  Let's do that sometime.

> Is it necessary to tear the
dash apart or is that just to make it prime?

That is just to make it prime.  Since you have
successfully(?) replaced your water pump ;-) I figure that
maybe you are up to taking your dash apart next.  If you are
the kind of person who filled your valley-of-death with RTV,
then you will probably want to take your dash apart.  But it
sounds like you didn't, so you aren't.

For a decent aircon overhaul I suggest first removing the
orifice tube & inspecting it.  Whether or not you flush the
system could depend on how gunked up the orifice screen is.
The problem is that once you start messing with the
evaporator connections, the job can snow-ball into replacing
the evaporator depending on how corroded the fittings are or
if a previous mechanic dented or kinked the lines.
Evaporators are repairable, per se.  And new ones I think
cost around $300ish.  John Hervey finally came up with
something that I hear fits okay.  But if you want to keep
the job simple then hope that the evaporator doesn't need to
come out.

If you want to flush the system, you can pre-flush with
mineral spirits (cheap) and follow with a quality solvent
such as Dura-141.  But you cant flush the accumulator as
that would really muck things up.  I'm terrible at keeping
prices in my head on all the parts.  I posted a list before
for Mike C & Rich A when I took a trip up to Maryland on the
way to the Pigeon Forge show.  Can that be found?

To round off & guesstimate some prices (very crude
guestimations):
$30 to $50 for flushing solvents depending on how anal you
want to be.
3 cans of R-134a at $3.50? per can.  I haven't watched
prices.
$20 for bottle of Ester-100 oil.
$2 for orifice tube -or- $20 for VOV (which I recommend
particularly for R-134a)
$10 would cover all the o-rings in the system, but you run
the risk of damaging things that dont absolutely need to
come apart.  For a full job you take everything apart
anyway.  If on a budget then you may not want to risk having
something break that didn't need to come apart.
$10 for R-134a conversion fittings
$40 for new accumulator
--------------
I think that does it for parts.  I source the parts all over
town -- mostly NAPA and Superparts in St. Pete.  My labor?
I'm not a business man.  What am I worth per hour?   The
rubber hoses probably dont need to be replaced unless they
are wet/oily looking or got cut by the fiberglass underbody.
If one of the hoses are already repaired then I suggest
replacing all the hoses.  They do leak more with R-134a, but
you might prefer to add extra refrigerant & oil periodically
rather than fix it right.  I'm trying to look thru old
receipts to see what hoses cost.  Amazon's invoices are
impossible to decipher.  And every time I go there I'm
having extra things done, so I cant point my finger to any
one job and say what a set costs.  Maybe Mike Cohee or Rich
A or Samuel could speak up?  It's in the DMCForum archives I
think.  If you find it there then all the other things I
mentioned above may not coincide very well.

> At least you have experience at adjusting timing, I have
zilch.  Is
there anything I need to buy to do this.  I know you have a
timing
light, but do you have the other thing?

The "other thing" is a hand vacuum pump.  I saw one on the
shelf at PepBoys last time I was there for $40.  That was a
plastic Mighty-Vac.  NAPA sells a better one that looks
identical only is metal & more expensive.  It needs to have
a vacuum gauge to work for checking the vacuum advance.  To
just set the timing without checking that the advance is
working properly, you only need to set it at idle.  So you
dont need a tach, vacuum pump or gauge.  You only need a
timing light and I think a 10 or 11mm wrench.

Walt

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