Car aircon and regassing.

This is a topic which seems to come up quite regularly and it appears to me that many believe it's just a case of plugging in a source of gas and pumping it in, and in fact you can buy DIY kits to do just that however some can cost as much or more than a professional job.

To do it properly involves rather more than that and having just had my own car professionally regassed I thought it an opportune moment to detail the process.

Well past it's first flush of youth the AC/s performance was lacklustre to say the least so I decided finally to get it checked out, yes I know, should have done it BEFORE the heat of the Summer NOT after!

It's germane to this particular case to point out that in the 15 months or so I've owned the car the AC/s performance had not materially changed and also, having bought it from a friend who'd owned it from a few months old, I knew that apart from routine servicing the the system had never before been regassed which made a difference in the diagnosis of why it wasn't performing, I.E. it was unlikely to be due to a leak. Had it been regassed previously but was again under performing then a dye leak test would have been the first step but in the circumstances that was deemed unnecessary and a full regassing procedure was initiated.

First thing noted was the weight of gas which was specified for the system and that should be found written on a label somewhere in the region of the gas injection valve, in my case this was 740gms.

The first stage of the process was to extract and recover whatever gas remained in the system and in my case it was a lowly 130gms so little wonder that it wasn't working too well. Extraction took maybe 10 minutes but of course that will vary both with system capacity and content.

The next stage was to perform a vacuum test and in fact was longest test taking around 35 minutes, I went for a coffee while waiting !

Following that was a pressure test which took another 10 minutes or so.

Having passed both those tests the system was refilled with the specified 740gms of gas and lubricant which was quite quick at about 5 minutes.

It was then tested in the car where a temperature of 8c at the vents was quickly achieved.

The total cost was €75 which was comprised of the cost of the gas @ €12/200gm (740gms capacity - 130gms recovered = 610gm = €42) leaving €33 for labour which I felt was a very reasonable charge for the work which had been done.

Having heard tales of people having had regassing done for as little as €30, and given the cost of the gas itself, I'm left wondering what it was that was actually done for so little money, maybe nothing more than a quick squirt from a DIY kit ?

I had this done by Quesada Quik Fit who I found courteous helpful and efficient. I'd actually stopped by to make an appointment in fact but luckily they were able to take the car in there and then and do it while I waited.