A/C refrigerant amount?
 

I'm a first time poster here, but I've been reading here a lot... I actually have a couple questions, all related.

1. How much refrigerant should be in the A/C system? Is there a sighting window? Or do I need to hook up a pressure gauge? If I have to hook up a pressure gauge, what should the pressure on the Low and High be?

2. If I turn on the A/C, I can hear the relay click and the A/C would turn on, but after 30 seconds or so, it would click again as if the A/C turned off and back on again. Could the relay be bad?

3. If its not the relay, then how would I run an engine diagnostic check?

THanks in advance for your replies...... I've searched the forums but only a few topics came up.

Re: A/C refrigerant amount?
 

If you goto your local parts store and get an r134a recharge kit, it will come with a gauge to measure the pressure. I dont know how accurate it is tho.

Re: A/C refrigerant amount?
 

bruinbear714

There is a sticky label on the inside of your hood. Tells you how much refrigerant should be in the system. This number is only good IF you take it to the shop, they hook up your A/C lines to a machine to recover the refrigerant and pull the lines in to a vacuum.

Then, assuming the weight scale on the machine is accurate, they'll charge it with the amount of refrigerant (and replenish any oil thye might have recovered).

About the clicking on & off, I suggest that the best investment for you is a haynes manual. It could be that your compressor is shutting on & off because the sensor is tripping it? Do the cooling fans also go on & off?

The haynes manual tells you how to jumper the condenser sensor to force it to stay on. May be you could do this and if it still clicks on & off, then you have a problem.

Re: A/C refrigerant amount?
 

The relay clicks on/off intermittenly as if something's tripping it. The fans do come on when the A/C is on for that brief few seconds before it shuts down. When the A/C is on, the air gets cold a little, but I'm not sure how cold it can get because it is never on for more than 10 seconds. I know for sure the problem isn't the relay now because I replaced it with a working one from the LAMP and HORN to test, and it gave the same problem.

How do I read the diagnostic codes off the ecu? And where would I access it?

Re: Re: A/C refrigerant amount?
 

Sounds like your low on refrigerant.

Re: A/C refrigerant amount?
 

Any more tips? I'm trying to gather up a list of what to do...

I was just at K-Mart this morning to pick up a few goodies and of course browsed the auto section. They have several R134 kits available. One is a booster which adds about 3oz of juice and some conditioners for about 6 bucks. I baught that for my buddies I30 who's A/C isn't icey cold anymore. But they also have a kit for 25 bucks that comes with a gauge to actually measure the system pressure. It's idiot prof, being it's color coded. Just add R134 until the gauge is in the green and your system is full!

You might wanna go check that out.

Most likely the reason your compressor is cycling on and off is because it's low on refrigerant and the low pressure switch is being tripped.