Regassing Air-con.

patman99

Has anyone had a go at regassing the air-con on a '98 Focus 1.8 Zetec?.

benham3160

If you mean a DIY can, I'd avoid it.

Kwik-Fit (of all people) actually have a very highly respected Air-Con charge service, it's usually £40 out of season, and represents very good value.

Without getting too technical, it's really not advised to regas aircon systems without a) Having them pressure tested for leaks b) Having them vacuumed for water c) Without refilling with correct amounts of refrigerant and oil.

None of which can be done with a DIY can.

Regards,
Andy

moonrakerz

It might be worth going to a Ford dealer. Mine charged £70 to drain the system, clean it out, pressure test and refill.

Evilm

benham3160 wrote: »

If you mean a DIY can, I'd avoid it.

Kwik-Fit (of all people) actually have a very highly respected Air-Con charge service, it's usually £40 out of season, and represents very good value.

Without getting too technical, it's really not advised to regas aircon systems without a) Having them pressure tested for leaks b) Having them vacuumed for water c) Without refilling with correct amounts of refrigerant and oil.

None of which can be done with a DIY can.

Regards,
Andy

Do not use Kwik Fit - If I hadn't got a second opinions= I would have been down £1000-£1500 thanks to them claiming things were broken that were not.

The garage we take our car to to get serviced does aircon recharge for about £60 IIRC. Try your local garages.


I personally would not try the DIY option.

hc25036

My local Bosch Service Centre does an aircon service for £49 if you ask nicely....

patman99

I had no idea it was so cheap. My mechanic is an ex-Ford main dealer chap, so I'll talk to him.

benham3160

Evilm wrote: »

Do not use Kwik Fit - If I hadn't got a second opinions= I would have been down £1000-£1500 thanks to them claiming things were broken that were not.

The garage we take our car to to get serviced does aircon recharge for about £60 IIRC. Try your local garages.


I personally would not try the DIY option.

I'm not a KwikFit fan, however I hear nothing but praise of their aircon service. What was your experience with them?

Regards,
Andy

Gloomendoom

I've done a DIY recharge. It lasted about three hours.

If you speak to a specialist supplier, you can get the correct materials to do a proper job. What you can't do very easily is the diagnostic leak tests etc.

Personally, I'd wait until the winter when business is slow. I got a full service and recharge for less than £40 just by ringing round.

I don't think KwikFit are particularly cheap, I noticed my local Chrysler/Dodge/Jeep main dealer is currently offering a full aircon service for a penny less than £60.
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Evilm

benham3160 wrote: »

I'm not a KwikFit fan, however I hear nothing but praise of their aircon service. What was your experience with them?

Regards,
Andy

There is an old thread from late June about it somewhere but the basics are:

Car 1 (3 years old) being sold, needing regassing/fixing before garage would take it in part exchange so we only had a few days and took it to Kwikfit. They said there was a problem with it and claimed their "experts" in air con (after having it a whole day) said it was the condenser and it would cost £900+fitting to fix. Due to time (and the fact it was still in warranty for another week) it went into the main dealer who took half an hour to find that it had a broken wire leading to the condenser. Also a new condenser +fitting should have been about £460 maximum. Fix cost was actually £40 for time to find and solder the wire.

Car 2 (7 years old) has needed a regas for a couple of years. Before we got the report from the dealer about car 1 hubby decided to take this car in too and just get it done. They cleared the system and then claimed it wouldn't hold pressure and they couldn't recharge it. They said they thought it was perished pipes. Didn't get as far as quoting us a price for how to fix it. It was being serviced by the dealer the next week so we got them to look at it. Absolutely no problems at all and was holding pressure on first try. They did a recharge and all is fine. No doubt we would have been £200+ down on that if we'd let Kwik fits "experts" to look at it and do the work.

Like you I hadn't seen anything bad about their air con service before we tried to use them. Now we have tried it does seem that even this service is not immune to their usual upsell on things you don't need.

Oh, and car 1 came back with bright yellow paint on the front passenger corner of the bumper after they had it. Luckily it came off without leaving marks but we were not best impressed since we were trading it in in two days!