A/C Recharge for 1993 240 Wagon

Hey, all:

The AC on my 1993 240 wagon has been blowing warm for a while now. I
mostly drive around town and the few miles to/from work each day, so I
haven't really bothered with it. But I'm driving the car to Michigan
this weekend, about an 8 hour total round trip, so I thought I'd get
it recharged before I go; I'm not a fan of sweating! I had it done at
Doc Able's, a local (Evanston, IL) shop. The price I was quoted was
$99.99 for the AC service (computer evaluation - recover - vacuum - &
Recharge/AC system), plus Freon (I was quoted both $18.50/lb and
$22.53/lb). I spent a total of $198.25 (they also did their seasonal
special oil change, lube and safety inspection). So I was very
excited to drive home in comfort, only... not so much. While I did
feel it was slightly cooler, it was still pretty much blowing tepid
air. What I'm wondering is, is this something I should just give up
on and resign myself to having essentially no AC in the car? Or have
others of you had good experiences with successfully recharging your
240 AC systems?

 

17yrs? the seals are probably gone (or eaten by walruses, i don't
know). fluorescent die is borderline useless, in a car of this age.you
will identify one or two bad seals. renew them & a third will fail.
complete renewal is an option but neither cheap nor easy esp on a 240.
most r134a has lubricant\conditioner, but it doesn't help unless it
gets to all the seals (it just settles in the expansion tank). so turn
the AC on for a couple of minutes once a month, yes even Feb.

 

Did it work just after they recharged it, if so its a big leak , if
not they didnt fix the problem because the air should be able to make
you too cold at 90-100+

 

240s were never known for having stellar AC systems, but it should still
blow cold if everything is in good order. Is the auxiliary fan in front
of the condenser behind the grill working? Also was it converted to R134
refrigerant? I forget whether Volvo had gone to that by '93 or if they
were still using R12 but that sounds much too cheap for R12.

 

1993 was the last year for r12 w/ a few temporary exceptions for
existing equipment. the standard recharge involves swapping out the
nipples and using r134a, w/ a consequent loss of cooling. everybody
does it & i mean everybody. your local supermarket, the children's
hospital so long as they can pay their electric bills. it's cheaper
than throwing $100,000s of HVAC equipment. even in the best repair
the old compressors just aren't as high pressure as the modern
standard -- so the r134a doesn't expand enough to provide adequate
cooling. if you continue to get "tepid" air you probably don't have a
leak. it's just the combination of the r134a & worn internal seals in
the compressor. put a meter on the system (low pressure side) to know
for sure!

 

Here's an update: I took the car to a different mechanic -- my
regular garage, in fact -- and had to face the humiliation of
discovering that the people I'd just paid $200 actually did NOTHING to
my car, not even the oil change or tire rotation. The AC was not only
not fixed, but the condenser fan is missing and the condenser badly
damaged, so they could've pumped freon all day long and it wouldn't
have mattered. I've filed a dispute with my credit card company, and
my regular garage was happy to write a supporting letter for the
disupte stating that none of the work I was charged for had actually
been done. Hopefully it will be decided in my favor. Stupidly, I
only checked the first garage's online user ratings AFTER I got
screwed. Turns out their primary business isn't actually auto repair,
but screwing over folks with autos that need repair. Wow. Lesson
learned.

 

Residential and commercial A/C systems never used R134. Very early
systems were R12, but the standard has been R22 for decades. More
recently R22 is being phased out because it is a HCFC. Not nearly as
ozone damaging as the CFC R12 (about 5%) but that is still the rational
for replacing it. The new refrigerant for those applications is R410,
I'm not fond of it myself, the pressures it operates at are around
double that of R22 and both the equipment and the refrigerant are more
expensive but that's beyond my control. Propane is actually a very close
substitute for R22 but due to the flammability it's not legal to charge
an AC system with it in case there's ever a leak.

The fan was *missing*? What happened to it? That's not the sort of thing
that tends to just fall off! A missing condenser fan will definitely
impact the operation of the AC even if the condenser is fine. A system
that has been converted to R134 does not provide quite the cooling
capacity as R12, but I converted my 740 years ago and have found it to
be perfectly adequate for the climate here in the Northwest. It takes a
bit longer to really get going, but once it does, it blows cold even
when it's in the 90s outside.

 

The humiliation should be theirs, not yours. You're not the one who
committed fraud.

File a complaint with the police. These people are breaking the law.

 

The humiliation was in the fact that I had to admit to my regular
garage that not only had I cheated on them with another garage, but
I'd gotten royally screwed in the process. Trust me -- humiliation!

 

wow allot of issues have been raised...

it seems some people know refrigeration. i was limiting the discussion
to mobile refrigeration but even brick & mortar users were switching
to r134a for a while to meet the Montreal protocol. puron (r410a) just
isn't a seamless replacement for older systems. we have also learned
that it has a significant carbon foot print. the new fair haired child
is HFO-1234yf. no kidding. use all the letters & numbers you want
we'll make more. it's beginning to look like time we considered
propane again. a great refrigerant, so what if it blows up.

i'm glad you have placed a stop payment. it seems like these
@*&)%$%#^*)) are also due for criminal charges.

what happened to the fan does seem like a good question. the local
laws governing a/c differ so much, that there is never a standard
factory design for the system. some of the installations are so
awkward that i wouldn't be @ all surprised if a technician just ripped
parts off. (did anyone else's mom or dad explain to them that when you
put something back together you are always supposed to have extra
parts?)

finally, even if you just got a simple (i think you know by now that
is an oxymoron) a/c recharge, a system integrity test should be done.
in North America & Europe*, there are agencies of the central
government which will respond.

*ok Brazil, Ecuador, Argentina, Peru, Australia, Israel, New Zealand,
South Africa & Japan & Korea & i'll give up now. i'm sure i've missed
somebody.

 

LOL cheated on...

There's nothing wrong with trying out another garage, maybe someone
recommended them, no big deal. The important part is to undo the damage
they did.

 

I know this is an old thread - so I realize I may not get any replies, but
there are a couple of things said here that I'd like to clarify.
"Finally even if you just got a simple a/c recharge, a system
integrity test should be done..." Are you saying that with every
'recharge' the system is to be tested? And if it's not, there is an
agency to report that failure to? [Then let's name who that gets
reported to....]
The continued insistence that 1993 Volvo 240 A/C is an R-12 system
contradicts Volvo specs for that car. Virtually everyone that comes
across this thread in looking for info re: 1993 Volvo 240 A/C is likely
to believe system is R-12 and not 134A.
"CFC-Free Air Conditioning --
"All 1993 Volvos will feature air conditioning or electronic climate control
as standard equipment and all of these systems will use a
non-chlorofluorocarbon refrigerant. The new refrigerant, R134A, is a
chlorine-free material which is believed to have virtually no ozone
depleting potential. The introduction of R134A places Volvo among
the first car companies to totally eliminate the use of R12 (freon) as
a refrigerant."
Source: VOLVO 1993 TECH & SPEC, posted by Volvo
on VolvoCars.