I am getting ready to recharge the air conditioning on my '94 GXE but I am unsure whether or not my car is running R-134 or R-12 refrigerant. The dealer I take my car to said there are a fair number of '94 Maximas running around with R-12 (That baffled me because I thought Federal law mandated that the manufacturers switch to R134 in 1992 ). Is there an easy way to tell which type of refrigerant I am running?

 

A simple way to check is to look at the fittings where the refrigerant is charged into the system. Simply speaking if the fittings on both the low side and the high side has threads on them then there is a good chance that is uses R-12. If it looks like a quick disconnect type fitting then it uses R-134a. Hope that helps.

 

There should be ample id stickers under the hood, and little blue stickers on a number of he components (like the compressor) as well

John

 

Do those blue stickers indicate whether or not the car uses R-134?

 

n/m.

 

Are you recharging your system because of previous maintenance that was done which called for removal of A/C parts? Or are you recharging because it,s not as cold as it used to be? If the latter is the case, you will be wasting money because you have a leak somewhere which needs to be fixed. Refrigerant is constantly recycled in the system and is NEVER consumed/wasted in the process. Just some FYI.