You actually raise an interesting question. When I was a shop owner and dealer, we used the machine to recover refrigerant and do the occasional top off. We always used virgin or "new" refrigerant to recharge a system.

Most people charge with new refrigerant.

Sitting in traffic vs driving down the road have two different variables. 1.) airflow across the condenser 2.) engine/compressor speed If your fan is running at high speed and your cooling is not up to par, I'm inclined to believe that your charge is a little low. When you drive down the road, the e...

When I had the dealership, we turned over our recovered refrigerant to a vendor. We always used refrigerant from a new container to charge systems. Who knows what mystery gas came out of those systems. We did check them for sealer before recovering systems and if it has sealer, we told the customer ...

The new home that I built here in Orlando has all of the air handlers inside the living space. No units in the attic. We have what appears to be a closet door where the interior unit is mounted. My home in Birmingham AL had an attic mounted unit. While it was somewhat easy to get to, it was still a ...

I totally agree with you. Leave it alone.

There is a puller fan on the engine side of the radiator. My guess is that your fan is toast and the clutch fan can't draw enough air to remove the heat from the condenser, thus the pressure rises and your cooling is diminished.

The air in the system is going to add to your pressure readings and inhibit some cooling.

Recover the system entirely, install a new control valve on the compressor, install a new drier, vacuum and charge with a few additional ounces of oil. You're done.

I noticed about ten years ago that aftermarket parts were becoming less "original" in their designs. I guess you could say that they were cutting corners on the design to get the production and sales started. I once used a supplier for AC parts that the prices seemed right until we receive...

A 5 psi drop at rest wouldn't be a way to measure if you lost some refrigerant. I would attribute that to a temperature change.

The soapy water test is a better way to test than with dye. I prefer an electronic leak detector but would be fine with soapy water in lieu of.

Nice job diagnosing.

Those aluminum evaporator cores are just fine. I would definitely not tear apart a working system to swap out one of those.