1997 Chevy C/K1500 - Capacity and other questions

[andrew vanis]

Andrew, you might have read my recent post on the Excursion. I'll recap real quick. I reached out to our in-house tech guy. He said, in some cases, especially Ford. They (are) reducing the charge level by about 10%. But remember, a lower charge means less refrigerant to carry oil through the system. So always try to balance this for reliability.

Here's that post https://autoacforum.com/viewtopic.php?p=29855#p29855

So is that the combined oil+refrigerant weight or just the refrigerant and they keep the oil as prior?

Wondering if they change the oil:refrigerant ratio.

Likely a minute point since unless one has a new system (or a fully flushed one) it is impossible to know how much oil is in there.

Still curious about their thinking.

If you saw my Volvo (no high side port) post, a Volvo expert also suggested filling less than specified.

Glad to see things are developing for effectiveness of the system.

[Tim]

It is up now on the recent posts.

Oil should be the same. I emphasize that the charge levels should always be as close as possible to the original charge! Mentioning a lessor charge, as I have, should not be considered a standard with PF condensers. You might get a littler better cooling at the expense of reliability. Then the compressor dies, and people will blame the parts as being crappy. It's a balance and risk one takes undercharging. Compressor companies will nto be claiming to undercharge a system.

This would be a good discussion with the compressor manufacturers class at the MACS convention.

[tbirdtbird]

Please note that if you overcharge with 134, performance WILL go down, regardless of oil! Each system has a sweet spot.
If you were getting 38F at center vent, then leave it alone, which you said you did just that