btanchors

Greetings,

My 2003 GS430's Air Conditioner is not as cold as it used to be. The A/C has never been worked on (I am the original owner, with 107K miles). So, I figured the refrigerant might be a little low.

I purchased a decent set of manifold gauges, and I have the factory shop manual indicating what the proper pressures should be. But then, in the shop manual, I see something which really surprises me.

In the procedure for adding refrigerant, after connecting the can of R134a refrigerant, and expelling air from the hose, it then says:

"Open the high pressure hand valve and charge refrigerant".

WTF??!! Is this saying the R134a is entered on the HIGH side, not the LOW side? The next step says,

"When the low pressure gauge indicates14 psi, close the high pressure hand valve".

So, in two places, it refers to the high pressure valve when adding refrigerant.

Every A/C system I have dealt with, the refrigerant is added to the LOW side. Is there enough pressure in the can of R134a high enough to push the refrigerant into the high side? I always thought there was a danger of the refrigerant can exploding if it was exposed to high side pressure.

Can someone out there confirm that this is the right procedure? Sometimes these shop manuals are translated from Japanese, and errors get introduced during the translation. A/C systems can be really screwed up if done wrong, so I want to be confident of the procedure before I attempt this.

swfla

iTrader: (1)

I've never used a gauge set, always a can with hose on the low pressure port.