Thanks for the reply. It ended up being faulty equipment. The low side hose on my brand new Chinese FJC manifold gauge assembly had a complete blockage where the washer/gasket was supposed to be. It would intermittently feed pressure back to the gauge, but not accept refrigerant. I had ended up char...

In a nutshell: Compressor was short-cycling, 1 second on, 2 seconds off, constantly, no cold air. The static pressures were equal on both sides, but when I started it up I had as high as 90 on the low side, but only 125 max on the high side, dropping down to 90 when it cycled. Ambient temp outside w...