Fellas...I'm crushed. My Ac Compressor in the 93 240sx hatch has crapped out. It engages but doesnt circulate. My system was an r12 system that didnt have a leak (according to the tech that checked it out it still had close to 3lbs on freon in the system).

The agony came when the tech said that I was looking @ around 2 grand to get things back to in working order?? Is swapping out the compressor and recharging the system with r134a that expensive?? What would be needed to do the conversion? He mentioned dryer/ explansion valve/ compressor and freon....how accurate is that?

Im a little frustrated @ this point. Any advise or technical info on how I might be able to lower the cost? is this a possibly DYI job with proper tools and some patience??

My thoughts at the moment are parking the car and finding one that has AC until i feel motivated to work on my 240.

-Royce

 

2k is wayyy too much. you could get a new compressor expansion valve dryer for under like 500 and around 100 for a recharge

 

I was hoping that might be the case. How big of a pain would this to be by myself...say if the motor was already out of the car?? weekend Job?? (including the reinstall of the motor of course)

 

technically, there are all kinds of things you can do...
the cheapest way to do it would be to yank that compressor off, toss on one that you know works, then fill the system with r134.
It'll blow cold, but you'll have a lot of moisture in there which will eventually kill everything, and it won't be as cold as it could be.

You could buy all the parts and swap everything out, then take it to an a/c shop and have them vacuum and fill it.
That'd probably be the best option. That would let you take everything apart and clean it and put it all back together with fresh parts.

2 grand does sound pretty expensive, but then again, a brand new compressor is over 300 bucks. plus everything else, its over 500 bucks in parts... plus several hours of labor. I'd say 1,500 is probably closer to the right price. but it really depends on what all the guy was actually going to do too. If he was talking about pulling everything apart and flushing the lines out to get all of the old oil out, then that quote probably had 15 hours of labor in it.

You really want to get the old oil out because it isn't technically compatible with the old r12 oil.

so I'd bet that, that 2 grand quote was to do it the right way.

 

Legally you're supposed to have someone to evacuate the system. R12 is nasty shit, eats up the ozone layer... that's why they went to R134a.

Once the system is empty it's easy enough to change out all the parts. If it was me I would change out the dryer and the compressor and just blow compressed air through all the lines. I believe the expansion valve is under the dash (never had to replace one of those on my 240's), but the rest of the components are in the engine bay and easily accessible with the motor still in the car. You don't need any fancy tools except to recharge the system, but again, I'd take it to an A/C shop to vacuum the system down and recharge it. I've recharged the system without vacuuming it first, and it worked OK, but I feel like it doesn't work as well that way.

 

For what reason would i need to replace the explassion valve? Is it different between r12 and r134?? Replacing one under the dash doesnt not sound like a good time.

 

'90 240sx expansion valve location, and a ? : Nissan Online Mechanic

 

Nice find...not quite as bad as i thought it might be. Good write up in that article. Thank you!!

-Royce

 

Compressor replacement calls for 1.1 hrs
Expansion valve calls for 1.3 hrs
Evacuating and recharger the system 1.4 hrs
Drier .7 hrs

4.5 hrs, typical shop rate of $95/hr, $427 in labor, rough guess on parts and gas, $500-700, yeah that quote sounds a good bit high.

 

guess its better to be have the quote be high and come in lower than the other way around. either way I'll be toasting for a while...