Automotive Air Conditioning Information Forum (Archives)

brookman69y2k on Sun January 04, 2015 5:08 PM

Year: 99
Make: dodge
Model: ram
Engine Size: 5.9l
Refrigerant Type: r134

I am not a newbie to A/C , but a hobbyist. Yesterday I replace the heater core in my Son's truck. Dodge's designers apparently never had to actually work on a vehicle before. You have to remove the whole dash pulling it about 12in. away from the firewall, then you have to tilt back the air box that the heater core sits in to be able to feed the lines back through the firewall from the new heater core.

So I was watching a few of the videos on how to remove the heater core and most of them talked about removing the clips from the a/c lines up by the firewall to give them room to move when the air box is tilted back. I am sure you can guess what happened...... I wiggled the accumulator and the joint popped loose and sprayed dye and oil ( and refrigerant ) all over the place.

I knew that the joint at the compressor would leak during the summer when the pressure was up and before I replaced the fan clutch, since the system was empty I replaced the metal/rubber seals at the compressor, high side valve, and replaced the o-rings on the accumulator.

Under vacuum or pressure the needle drops back to 0 as soon as the source is removed.

so here are my questions:

1. I need to get rid of the dye all over the place. Does brake cleaner remove the dye/oil ?
2. Do I have to waste R134 to get enough pressure to find the leak?
3. Is there something else I should be looking at?

Thank you for your time.

wptski on Mon January 05, 2015 7:57 AM

Nitrogen is used to pressure test then spray connections, etc. with soapy water or special sprays made for that. Brake cleaner will clean most anything.

mk378 on Mon January 05, 2015 8:19 PM

A 1999 Dodge may be in the range that had the lemon evaporators that corrode and leak. Perhaps it let go when you were working near it.

For a big leak you can also use tiny amounts of 134a and a sniffer detector.

Edited: Mon January 05, 2015 at 8:22 PM by mk378

brookman69y2k on Mon January 05, 2015 10:01 PM

Thank you for the replies! I am hoping to get to it this week. I hope it is not the evap, that would be a pain in the butt.