I am about to take a trip to southern indiana. It's about 6 hours worth of total driving. So i am just checking and double checking every little thing on my car. While at autozone, i picked a little tempature guage you put in the dash to measure how well your ac system is working. It says a properly charged system will blow anywhere between 38 and 48 degress. Even at midnight last night after the heat wave was over, i could not get it to blow any colder than 60 degrees. Now, is that thing full of crap, or is my ac not blowing as cold as it should? If the guage is right, why would it not be blowing at the right tempature? It is R134a, and it has a full charge. What can i do to bring the temp down a little? Someone suggested having the system vacuumed down to remove any moisture that may be there? Would that help? Any ideas guys? Thanks.

Oh yeah, here is one crappy picture of my car. My scanner sucks.

www.geocities.com/timmi79


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1991 Firebird
3.1 Liter
T-Tops

[This message has been edited by 9D1BURD (edited August 01, 2001).]

 

What was the outside temperature when your A/C was blowing 60 degrees? If you have R-134a refrigerant, then you or the previous owner had a retrofit done as I believe R-12 was standard until '94. As far as my A/C theory goes and maybe someone can verify this: An A/C system is limited by the ambient(outside) air that it is taking the heat out of, so the best your system can do is deliver air that is approximately 25 degrees colder than the ambient air.

 

I dont know if its true, but I heard that a retrofitted ac will not blow as cold.

 

I'm no AC expert, but I'll throw a few thoughts your way.

As for the conversion not blowing as cold......
That's the first time I've heard that. I know a guy who does the conversions and have been in a car that has been converted and it blew ice cold air.

As for the ambient temp......
Sounds like a good idea/thought but again when I sat in the converted car it was 106° outside.
And the air was ice cold.

I'd have to say something is wrong within the system. You might be right in the vacum the system thought.
Could it be that the system is leaking? Just cause it was done does not mean it was done right.
Is the compressor kicking on and off rapidly? If so you are low on freon in accordance to other posts I've seen here.

Our AC systems has never been worked on and it's 11 years old.
It needs freon and it still blows at 60° during the day when it's in the high 90's.
We're going to get the conversion done in the next couple of weeks when the funds are a bit more on the plus side.

I hope you get a answer to this one.
Sounds like a stumper problem.

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91 Mystic Teal RS Convertible. 305 TBI, Auto, stock.
125,000 miles and still going strong.
Only minor mods planned for the near future.
Like headers, flowmaster exhaust, some ignition mods, K&N airfilter, Perhaps a chip if needed.
Waiting for the motor to blow up so I can install a ZZ4 crate motor. Let's just hope it don't blow up too soon.

 

I converted my 85 IROC to R134 a few years ago, after finally learning a lesson the hard way. I replaced my compressor with a remanufactured brand from AutoZone. Two blown compressors later, I got my money back and invested in a brand new AC Delco. While I thought that would cure my problems, it didn't entirely. Oh yeah, I also replaced the dryer with an AutoZone brand, which has worked fine. (Knock on wood). It worked okay for a while, at least up until I had some motor work done and the seals on the back of the compressor where screwed up somehow and all my coolant escaped. Moved to Missouri and found a good mechanic who charge up my system and found leaks around my a/c plumbing so we replaced all of the hoses and discovered that the condenser was leaking also. Replaced all of that, charged the system and injected some dye and I was off and running. Almost a month later, I found the dye, lying on my garage floor. The evaporator core let go. Replaced that and it now blows around 46 degrees (even on hot days) when on the highway and getting plenty of air flow through the front end. It blows around 60 in city traffic when air flow is not so good. Lately we've had temperatures in the mid to upper 90's with heat indices around 110. My point is that there are numerous things that could be the problem, however I don't believe that you should just settle for inferior performance because it's R134. There is some slight differences between R134 and R12 (besides the price), but I think converting is definitely the way to go.