FW: Your air conditioning suggestion

[Alex Kowalski]

Ben forwarded my reply to him back to this List and I'll chime in again.

First off, I misspoke in the original email to him.  Envirocare is actually
Enviro-Safe:

http://www.es-refrigerants.com/

The system in my '87 was functional but the temperatures were creeping up
gradually.  I believe that this was due to a very gradual coolant loss over
the life of the car (which only has ~56,000 miles on the clock.)  Whatever
leaks exist have been very small.

The Enviro-Safe refrigerant is a hydrocarbon-based refrigerant, in fact, I
believe it is pharmaceutical-grade isobutane (lighter fluid) with a heavy
pine scent added.  This sounds crazy, but it really isn't.  Before you jump
to any rash judgments, read some of the research on their site and do a
little thinking.  In fact, the use of chloroflourinated gases in automotive
A/C systems is really much, much worse.

I charged the system with only one can of this refrigerant and my
center-vent temps. hit a low of 38 degrees on a 75 degree day in high
humidity.  That's remarkable.  Thanks again, Ben.  I don't know why more
people aren't using this refrigerant, especially in otherwise functional
systems like mine, except because they don't know about it and haven't
thought about why they think they need to spend hundreds of dollars on an
R134a retrofit.

Alex Kowalski
'87 5KCSTQ (Blowing cool, cool air again -- reliably and at low cost)
'86 5KCSTQ (Soon to be doing the same)