Thunder's Garage Tetris: 04 Taco + 12 CTS-V + 06 GSXR

On a smarter note, you going to upgrade the UCAs or replace the ball joints with OEM?

 

Probably just go with OEM.. they're only $50 a pop and usually very quiet. Only just now have they gotten noisy, thanks to excessive mud getting into the torn boots.

 

The light racing are quiet as well. 20k plus miles on mine and no noises.

 

Goals! Subbed

 

You gotten mud on/in them yet?

 

I have, yes. They are ball joint UCAs. Doesn't seem to affect them. They are also greasable so I grease them twice per oil change.

 

Nice. I may go that route at some point, just not yet lol

 

Decided I'm going to work on the AC system myself. Shop would charge $550 just to swap the compressor and drier... I'm going to swap the compressor, drier and condenser. So by conservative estimates the replacement would cost $650 or more. Cost will only be $100 to remove the freon and recharge after I finish swapping the parts. Savings would be $500+. Considering the only complicated part is adding oil, the rest is just unbolting some nuts and bolts and adding new o-rings.. I'm going to do it myself. We aren't talking about valve adjustments here. The "hard" part is just going to the shop to have them do the freon and evacuation.

 

This is ultimately my goal for the fix. Though I saw someone bought tools for evacuation for a similar cost as a shop doing it.

 

Yeah, I wouldn't mind renting or buying a vacuum pump, but since I wouldn't need it for anything else, I will just pay the shop the $100 to do all of the freon related stuff (sucking the old freon out, evacuating system, adding new freon)

 

Parts coming in this weekend... off to get the freon recovered from the truck.

 

First time fit... well the air filter is almost too big to fit in my air box.. freaking lid wants to pop open had to clip off the bottom part a bit where it sits on the spring so it would fit better. Lame.

.. we'll see how the other parts go

 

New compressor in.. condenser and drier going in tomorrow.. then off to the shop to get evacuated and recharged.

The compressor only had ~15cc of oil in it. There's the culprit for the noisy compressor. Not happy with that little bit of oil in it. Thankfully no debris in the system.. it would not have been pretty if I ran it till death.

 

AC recharged today. So in all reality I put in
100cc into the compressor (after dumping out 100cc of the factory fill),
~40cc (maybe like 35cc because I was trying to put the oil in after it was mounted) in the condenser and
40cc in the drier. That is approx 180cc out of the total of 229cc needed for the system. If we assume that 40cc was in the evap (according to the FSM, if replacing the evap, the new evap needs 40cc of oil) and a little (9cc) in the lines, that is the remaining amount.

AC blows cold and operation is quiet once again... new compressor doesn't sound like a screaming banshee like my old one.

The job, in all reality, was not that hard.

 

So you just replaced the stuff on the outside right? The compressor, codenser and drier? And not the stuff behind the glove box?

 

correct, I didn't replace the evaporator since there was no debris in the lines. My condensor has seen better days though, so I decided to replace it. The Denso condenser was about $70 so I figured why not

 

And you determined there was no debris when they did the evac? This is hopefully my next project.

 

yeah, I had to swap the inlet plate from the old compressor to the new one, and I was able to take a look inside. I also dumped the oil from the old compressor. While the oil was very dark (not normal.. moisture probably).. there was no visible debris in the system. @Styx586 works on AC systems for GMs and helped me out, he said the oil looked fine other than the color, no debris. I agreed.

I also looked up what all is involved with flushing.. and it sounds like a pain in the ass. Generally most places will just swap out the parts now. Especially the evap and condenser... there is no way you can get all the debris out of them even with flushing. There's just too much surface area and too many tiny channels that the freon travels through. They just swap the parts and maybe flush or replace the lines.

I've looked up pics of what "debris in the AC system" looks like.. it's sort of a graphite lead color, lots of metal flakes, oil is thick and gooey looking, and grey, opaque colored. This was definitely not the case here. What I suspect is the oil is dark either from being worked too hard (too little in the system last time the AC system was opened up.. dealers fault) or moisture got in (...probably also the dealers fault for not properly evacuating the system).


Here's a pic I found online of "catastrophic compressor failure".. I've seen other pictures that show large metal shavings in an otherwise clean looking system. Neither were present.

 

Here are some other good articles on the Denso website:

Compressor failure analysis:
http://www.denso-am.com/products/au...l/ac-compressors/compressor-failure-analysis/

Oil distribution in AC system:
http://www.denso-am.com/products/au...-compressors/practical-tip-on-compressor-oil/

A useful thread on TTORA (specfically post 15)

 

@cynicalrider
Some tips on the compressor replacement.
Pull back the fender apron on the pass side near the front of the truck so you can get to the bolts for the freon lines and the top two mounting bolts on the compressor. You can access the bottom two bolts from underneath the truck (remove skids).
Remove the bracket attached to the front crossmember for the hard lines there (see pic with bracket removed for reference) this will allow you to move the lines enough to wiggle the compressor out from between the front crossmember and radiator. I unbolted the fan shroud and tried to scoot it out of the way, this may have helped some.. but loosening the lines is what ultimately helped me get the compressor out. It's still a tight fit but some finagling will get it out of there.





Also, getting the electrical connector off the compressor was a bitch.

The drier and condensor are easy. Just follow the FSM if you have it. You may need to loosen the driver side headlight at the 10mm bolt and swivel the plastic bracket out of the way to get to the rearmost bolt on the drier. Tightening/loosening the drier clamp and re-positioning to get to the bolt helps too. Once the drier is off you can completely remove the lines that go to the condenser and get the condenser off.

When done, make sure the cable is attached in the little cradle properly for the hood latch mechanism after bolting it back. I didn't do this and went to pop my hood, nothing happened. Thankfully the grill was still off so I just loosened the whole thing and figured out what the problem was. Also, loosening and adjusting the hood bracket higher or lower on the mounting point will probably be needed in case your hood no longer 'pops' open.