John,

I am fascinated by your success story.  I have a new receiver/dryer, a R134
conversion kit from Bus Depot and a gauge + R134 refrigerant system from
Wal-Mart but haven't mustered up the nerve to try the swap.  A few
questions:  Did you have the R12 evacuated by an A/C shop? What do you mean
by "I pumped the system down overnight"?  Did you simply unbolt the old
dryer and bolt in the new one then add coolant or do you have to have a
vacuum drawn on the system first?  Hopefully my swap goes as well as yours.

Ben Beasley
'87 Vanagon GL Syncro "Babe, the big blue ox"

-----Original Message-----
From: Vanagon Mailing List [mailto:vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM]On Behalf
Of lauterba
Sent: Sunday, May 25, 2003 9:58 PM
To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
Subject: A/C Success

After installing the new receiver-drier, I pumped the system down overnight
and didn't get a chance to put the new refrigerant in until this afternoon.
I put in about three pounds taking care to purge the lines of my gauge set
before hooking it to the system.  The air from the A/C started cooling down
nicely so I stopped there even though there appeared to be pockets of gas as
the refrigerant passed under the sight glass of the receiver-drier.  I put
the clamp, which holds the receiver-drier to the frame, back on and gave it
a test drive.  Ambient temperature was about 85 deg. F under hazy sun and I
had lots of air coming in through the heater vent.  Still, the discharge air
from A/C quickly fell into the 50s.  After about fifteen miles, I came back
home, pulled the grill, and put duct tape over the air entrance to the
heater.  I also sprayed some cleaner at the cooling coil to wash away some
dirt.  I then took the van out along US 41 at 50 to 60 mph, and the
discharge air temperature stabilized around 45 deg. F.

I am sure I did plenty of things wrong from not replacing the O-rings on the
receiver-drier to not adding enough refrigerant.  However, "professional"
A/C guys haven't done as well.

John Lauterbach
Macon, GA
'84 7-passenger