The annual MACS trade show, held in Orlando this year, may appear to have been just rows and rows of product displays. But a stroll-and-stop approach at manufacturers’ exhibits proved…
By Steve Schaeber, MACS Manager of Service Training While visiting a local shop and taking some pictures for this edition of ACtion, I got to talking with one of the…
No automotive A/C refrigeration system is completely tight, and cooling performance can be marginal when the refrigerant charge is not correct. On today’s small capacity systems, that’s just a few…
by Jacques Gordon To anyone who has been following along, it looks more and more like the auto industry will never have one universal air conditioning refrigerant. That means we…
By Paul DeGuiseppi, MACS manager of service training The Mobile Air Conditioning Society’s blog has been honored as the best business to business blog in the Automotive Aftermarket by the…
From the MACS Technical Think tank Mixed/Cross-contaminated Refrigerant When a vehicle arrives at your shop for A/C service, try to determine if you might be about to work on a…
New 2010/2011 data from the Professional Automotive Repair Technician Survey (P.A.R.T.S.) shows that only 5 percent of technicians responding to the survey keep A/C Compressors in stock. They rely on 2.8 sources when it comes time to re-stock for the three jobs per month, on average, they perform requiring this part. P.A.R.T.S. is conducted annually by Counterman magazine and tracks technician preferences in a number of product categories.
There’s nothing cheaper or more benign than soap bubbles for finding a leak. As a technician with a 1999 Pontiac Bonneville complained, he tried trace dye and two different electronic leak detectors with no luck, despite the fact that the system was gushing between a half-pound and a pound overnight. But when he swabbed the compressor nose with soap solution, presto, it bubbled. His conclusion: back to basics does it.
1) What is HFO-1234yf?
HFO-1234yf is a chemical refrigerant that will be used in new cars in place of R134a.
Once again, the MACS office is beginning to receive calls about bad, contaminated or mislabled refrigerant. Some folks in theU.S.are receiving offers to purchase refrigerants that contain hydrocarbons (HC), notably under the designations HC-12a or similar names. All of these are listed as “unacceptable for use” on the EPAs companion page to the SNAP list.