4k/CGT/Urq owners! Get you A/C ICE cold!!! (long)

[Henry A Harper III]

On Tuesday, June 24, 2003 9:16 AM, Roa, Greg [SMTP:Greg.Roa at Cinergy.COM]
wrote:
...
> As far as having the evaporator freeze, I guess you could freeze between
the fins, and block the flow of air, so you wouldn't get any cooling.
> I don't know if this can cause other problems.
...

The minor physical fact that frozen water takes up more volume than liquid
water has many interesting consequences. For instance, ice floats and the
oceans aren't frozen from the bottom up. Icebergs, the Titanic. Then there
is erosion of things like mountains and roads resulting from freeze-thaw
cycles of water in cracks. "Frost heaves", anyone? On a more automotive
note, this is also what the "freeze plugs" in the block of your Audi (MAC)
are designed to compensate. I personally would like to avoid
freeze-thaw-cycle-related metal fatigue in a relatively delicate component
such as an evaporator which has specifically not been designed for this
situation because all air-conditioning systems have switches whose express
purpose is to keep the evaporator from freezing. It might be a good idea to
make sure that your evaporator is in fact not *quite* getting cold enough
to freeze water.

HTH
Henry Harper
http://www.henry-harper.com hah at alumni.rice.edu
1991 200 quattro, 119.9k, still limping along on R-12
1988 GTI 16v, 236k, nice and chilly R-134a conversion with new expansion
valve