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You can pick up an AC manifold on amazon for about $20 and cans of refrigerant (not top off kits) are available at any auto parts store. There's plenty of reaso

You can pick up an AC manifold on amazon for about $20 and cans of refrigerant (not top off kits) are available at any auto parts store. There's plenty of reasons to need to open the AC system in a car. Unfortunately AC repair shops generally price gouge. I've seen shops charge > $100 just to evacuate a system for you, which is just hooking it up to their (admittedly very expensive) recovery machine for a couple minutes. Take the car back to have it filled again with about 4x $6 cans of refrigerant and they'll charge $200+ to once again hook it up to their machine for about 20 minutes. Ask them to diagnose your busted AC system and they'll inevitably tell you the evap coil is leaking and it's a $2k+ repair because of the 15 hours of labor involved in removing and reinstalling your entire dash. Go home and follow some youtube directions and find out it was really just a leaking oring on the condenser. It's no wonder people do these repairs at home. Maybe the fix is for the auto industry to move to a less harmful refrigerant and design their AC systems in ways that don't require them to be disassembled for various unrelated repair work.

rascul 4y ago
> Maybe the fix is for the auto industry to move to a less harmful refrigerant I think 1234yf is supposed to be a lot better. I'm not sure what the adoption rate is, though.
dsfyu404ed 4y ago
You're not paying for the repair. You're paying for the peace of mind that comes with a "legitimate business" that you can sue if their shop burns down with your car in it, has an expensive machine that avoids discharging refrigerant, follows labor law, etc. It's the same reason people pay more for products that are ethically sources. That said I think the prices are crazy and would be lower if the financial burden of running a "legit" shop weren't so high.
samtho 4y ago
They’re are plenty of reasons to open the system, my point was that it isn’t a simple fluid top-off that oil or engine coolant is. A leaky A/C system is really an exception and people who work on their cars typically understand the work that goes into this and why it shouldn’t ever need topping off in ideal circumstances. I agree that refrigerants need to be safer, but it’s not my experience that people who are relying on their cars to literally survive are going to just pop the refrigerant valve and let it rip.

rascul 4y ago

> Maybe the fix is for the auto industry to move to a less harmful refrigerant I think 1234yf is supposed to be a lot better. I'm not sure what the adoption rate is, though.

dsfyu404ed 4y ago

You're not paying for the repair. You're paying for the peace of mind that comes with a "legitimate business" that you can sue if their shop burns down with your car in it, has an expensive machine that avoids discharging refrigerant, follows labor law, etc. It's the same reason people pay more for products that are ethically sources. That said I think the prices are crazy and would be lower if the financial burden of running a "legit" shop weren't so high.

samtho 4y ago

They’re are plenty of reasons to open the system, my point was that it isn’t a simple fluid top-off that oil or engine coolant is. A leaky A/C system is really an exception and people who work on their cars typically understand the work that goes into this and why it shouldn’t ever need topping off in ideal circumstances. I agree that refrigerants need to be safer, but it’s not my experience that people who are relying on their cars to literally survive are going to just pop the refrigerant valve and let it rip.