Thread: Getting Vigo Air conditioning re-gassed

^ This is what i was thinking, they never want to do the job that needs doing, rather they want to do the job that suits them. Thailand same same England in that respect. (and just about everywhere else I suppose).

Originally Posted by daveboy

some sort of kwikfit type place.

I was thinking of going to Toyota, will check the price there and then try one of these other quick fix places.

I use an air con shop that does all types, auto and home sales and service and have had good luck with them, but I do not know how you would spot a good one.
Hell if it looks like an aircon shop and don't look like a junk yard, stop and ask if they can check out the aircon and see what they say.

had this with the D-Max
Took it to Isuzu
didn't cost much
works a treat now

Best to get it done at Toyota.
Keep in mind best to tell them to find the leak before they recharge your aircon system.

Originally Posted by dirtydog

Its a few hundred baht for a regass, the first few places you try will probably say the compressor is no good and want 20k baht though.

yep, same thing happened to me.

lucky got a second place to just regass it first.

Thanks guys, will do a tour of the city and check out some places.

I had the same problem with my new Fortuner it was a right hassle getting it fixed through Toyota. They ofc tried recharging the system and in less than a month it was not working. Took it to our local dealer and after pushing them to check for a leak they found one and fixed it took 3 days and left me with shifter and stereo not working. They had the nerve to suggest it was ok for me having to use shift lock evrytime I wanted to go in and out of gear on the automatic. My wife went up 1 side and down the other of the service manager LOL. After 1 month back to square 1, took it to Bangkok to have it checked again and they replaced the entire system it has been great since too bad Toyota couldn't do it right the first time.

Originally Posted by spliff

Should have ur compressor taken out and cleaned as we

Don't you mean condenser??

If the vehicle is only 5-10 years old you probably only need to evacuate the system, replace the receiver dryer and recharge. 2-3k baht.
If in an older car/truck the evaporator is the culprit add 1000 baht to the above.
Compressor on these later model vehicles rarely if ever fail.
The condenser is never an issue unless damaged or obvious blocked by debris.


Here's a system diagram

Thats right earl, usually a leak on the high side or a dirty condenser sometine in a dirty atmos a lot of lint and crap will partually plug air flow thru the evap. but not often, the rotary compressors last a long tme.

What's in the Receiver-Drier that it wants replacing?

Originally Posted by watterinja

What's in the Receiver-Drier that it wants replacing

It is a kinda filter like a fuel filter as sorts and it can collect moisture and become plugged, but they can be baked out, at least the ones on commercial mechanical reefer units can, I don't know about the automotive ones, maybe cheaper to just junk em and replace with a new one.

What if you pull a vacuum downstream of the Receiver-Drier, then follow with a nitrogen purge, from upstream of the F-D?

The vacuum step boils off the water lodged in the filter-drier. The nitrogen chases it out the system. Can repeat, or multi-vacuum, before purge.

Going to have a lot of vaccume to do it and 29" is damn hard to attain, then your heat source is another thing,
Water temps into Flash evaps is right around 155 * F to get good water out of the evaps.

Vacuum
(In/Hg)
Boiling
Point
29 76.62
28 99.93
27 114.22
26 124.77
25 133.22
24 140.31
23 146.45
22 151.87
21 156.75
20 161.19

You would pobly not get much over 21"/hg and thats makes a heat of 156 hard to get at the dryer.
most likely cheaper to throw it away and put on a new one..

Cost 2k for a new evaporator and regassing in the missus car. Whatever one is inside the car itself. It sprang a leak when we were starting it up, a big his and we knew something was wrong.

Originally Posted by blackgang

Going to have a lot of vaccume to do it and 29" is damn hard to attain, then your heat source is another thing,
Water temps into Flash evaps is right around 155 * F to get good water out of the evaps.

Vacuum
(In/Hg)
Boiling
Point
29 76.62
28 99.93
27 114.22
26 124.77
25 133.22
24 140.31
23 146.45
22 151.87
21 156.75
20 161.19

You would pobly not get much over 21"/hg and thats makes a heat of 156 hard to get at the dryer.
most likely cheaper to throw it away and put on a new one..

You got that in decent units (SI)? Your US stuff is aweful.

Thinking more here of your idea of industrial systems, where you 'boiled' off the water. Perhaps a combination of a roughing vacuum pump + gentle heat around the filter-drier would be useful, followed with N2 purge.

Actually, I'm digressing here onto a particular project I'm working on where we have filter-driers that will need to be sweat-ins. I'd like to be able to clean on-line, without unneccessary hacks into the lines.

Originally Posted by watterinja

You got that in decent units (SI)? Your US stuff is aweful.

I hope you are
Flash evap units have their own vac pumps and are as good as you can get, I hope you are kidding,, if not then you are full of shit. I have ran small units that got their heat from a generating set jacket water thru a heat exchanger and only kept the pot water tanks topped up on a long range sport boat up to units that also used jacket water heat source from 399 Cats on main propulsion or generating sets that made 20k gallons a day to a max of 40k gallons a day each.
I have no trouble making sweat in connections and can pobly do it as fast as you could threaded stuff.
But that is neither here nor there, it still requires heat and a good source of vaccume, and doing it on a car makes me tired just thinking of crawling around.

But you have to be extra careful of bad product when using large flash units and 700* F live steam as much over 158 degrees and you can have a lot of really bad stinking water in your tanks as I did once when making water from Gatun lake and paying to much attention to my nice Red Doobie instead of the temp gages.

Originally Posted by Travelmate

Best to get it done at Toyota.
Keep in mind best to tell them to find the leak before they recharge your aircon system.

I disagree, why pay for them checking if you don't know if anything is wrong? First let it get filled up again and then watch if it loses gas too quickly. The costly check and repair can then be done.

Originally Posted by watterinja

Thinking more here of your idea of industrial systems, where you 'boiled' off the water. Perhaps a combination of a roughing vacuum pump + gentle heat around the filter-drier would be useful, followed with N2 purge. Actually, I'm digressing here onto a particular project I'm working on where we have filter-driers that will need to be sweat-ins. I'd like to be able to clean on-line, without unneccessary hacks into the lines.

Just how much vaccume do you suppose you will be able to maintain over a short period of time and how far from your vaccume source to the driers you are trying to dry because you will have to dump the vapor outside the system.

Butif you can get it to condense in the lines after the filter/driers then the nitro flush will pobly blow it clear.

Thanks BG.

I'll run some tests on one of my air-to-water heat-pump systems.