Refrigerant and rebuilding AC

[aL pOWELL]

Related to the question about releasing refrigeratnt into the atmosphere...

The last time I had to do an AC job (last summer), recovering the
refrigerant was moot onna counta it had left the premises already. If this
were not the case, I would have taken it to an AC shop and had them purge
the system.  I feel that we should do this as responsible citizens, but I'm
not under the delusion that the ozone layer disappeared for a day because
one single car lost its load of R-12. (I'm not even convinced that R-12 from
automobiles is really an issue with the ozoen layer, but that's another
debate.)

My experience is that MOST AC shops want to do all the work themselves and
charge you $$$$$$ prices for parts.  They will refuse to do the job unless
you let them do the whole job...and this is especially true of dealerships.
I understand why they wnt to do this - they're in business to make money.
However, they don't have to live on MY money. Capitalism also means you have
choices! If you look around and make some calls and are VERY clear that you
are doing the parts replacement and only need the system charged, it, you'll
find an **independent shop** that has no problem with charging your system
when you bring it to them. The shop I found also replaced a bad fitting in
the conversion kit I bought as I was changing my 1990 200 to R-134A.

Results - low repair bill, functioning AC. Happy, happy, joy, joy.

************************************
Al Powell
apowell at gocougs.wsu.edu
1958 Fiat 1200 Transformabile Spyder
1983 Datsun 280ZX Turbo
1990 Audi 200
1999 Chebby Blazer
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