AC top-up confiusion. R12A or R134A?

Hi folks,

My 2001 Windstar AC isn't as cold as last year so I thought it may need a top up. I have a R134A pressure guage, a Haynes manual, an AllData subscription, the Ford service CDs, a laptop based scan tool and a mechanic father. I was going to give it a try but I ran into some confusion.

I went to the auto parts store and got the guage and some cans to top up with. I asked a couple times and the guy told me despite the R12A on the can that this is what you use with R134A. Sure enough it says compatible with R12A and R134A.

I get home and thought to myself I wasn't satisfied. The label says "Evacuate the system. Do not mix refrigerants." Great.

Off to the next store. They had something called Duracool (I think). Same instructions "Evacuate system first, do not mix refrigerants." Except this stuff said "Equivalent to HFC134."

So what do I get and how do I do this. Can I just top up the system with one of these or do I need to evacuate - which I'm not crazy about.

Any ideas?

Hi folks,

My 2001 Windstar AC isn't as cold as last year so I thought it may need a top up. I have a R134A pressure guage, a Haynes manual, an AllData subscription, the Ford service CDs, a laptop based scan tool and a mechanic father. I was going to give it a try but I ran into some confusion.

I went to the auto parts store and got the guage and some cans to top up with. I asked a couple times and the guy told me despite the R12A on the can that this is what you use with R134A. Sure enough it says compatible with R12A and R134A.

I get home and thought to myself I wasn't satisfied. The label says "Evacuate the system. Do not mix refrigerants." Great.

Off to the next store. They had something called Duracool (I think). Same instructions "Evacuate system first, do not mix refrigerants." Except this stuff said "Equivalent to HFC134."

So what do I get and how do I do this. Can I just top up the system with one of these or do I need to evacuate - which I'm not crazy about.

Any ideas? I don,t know anything about this Duracool product but almost every auto part store in US, sell R134A refrigerant, even in Wal MArt in their automotive dept.
2001 Windstar uses R134A, not the R12 and I am surprise that you can find this R12, because this has been replace by R134A since a while. You can find R134 in single can or can with pressure gauge, which is very easy to use.

Make sure you use only R134a.

You will need to evacuate your system only if it has gone "atmospheric" (has had a leak so bad that air and water vapor have entered the system). If your ac clutch is cycling "even just a little" ... this severe leak hasn't happened and you can just add refrigerant to get things going again.

Of course, if you aren't sure of the service history of your ac ... then all bets are off .... some earlier owner may have done "who knows what".

Thanks guys,

The r12A I got isn't the same as the old style R12. Here's a link to what I got:

http://www.redtek.com/win_12a_refintro.html

I will be returning it though. Salesman tried telling me to use it in my R134A Windstar. I guess you can, but you can't mix it with the stuff in there now.

The Duracool stuff I mentioned was what our local Walmart carried. It said HFC134 so I wasn't buying it either.

I finally went over to a reputable parts house that we used back in the day and guess what. They had R134A sitting right out on the shelf. In other words, retail doesn't always get the job done.

I did buy this car used though. The guy I bought it from had it one year and he bought it off a lot. The air was super cold last year and just poured water out of the bottom of both the front and back after running max A/C. This year, not so cold, no water. I'm going to start a thread on this one so I can ask opinion without being tied to the confusion of the coolants.

So I guess moral of this story is get the right refrigerant from a good parts supplier and don't mix 134a with 12a.