fragmare

The sight glass is cloudy for the first 2-3 minutes after you turn on the A/C, then turns perfectly clear until you turn it off again. Is that normal, or does it indicate under/over charge? The high side is scalding hot and the low side is ice cold, just like they should be. The system is retrofitted (by me) and I can also say there is exactly 4 oz. of Ester oil, 21 oz. of R-134a, and 1 oz. of "stop leak" bs that was in one of the 134a cans I had (probably just PAG with snake oil additive). The system was fully evacuated prior to adding new refrigerant/oil. It does blow cold, but it doesn't seem quite cold enough for some reason. Anyway, is the cloudiness upon A/C startup normal?

redm3turbo

my 95 isnt cloudy....

jbpnoman

When you turn on your A/C, it creates a humidity and temperature difference between the inside and outside of the car. Sometimes, that can make a window fog up, which is what you're seeing.

Clean your windows with some Windex, and don't worry about it.

fragmare

Hmm, sometimes I wonder if there's too much oil in the system for it to cool properly. Having the system vacuumed out removes all refrigerant and moisture, but doesn't get rid of the oil. It's got whatever mineral oil left from when it was an R12 system (6.8oz or something, maybe a little less), probably at least 3.5oz of PAG leftover from a previous evac/recharge attempt a local autoshop tried a few weeks back and then the 4oz of Ester oil i just put in, plus the 1oz of "stop leak" in one of the r134 cans i used. That totals up to 15.3oz of total oil in there, 8.5 of which is actively being used by the refrigerant... seems like a lot to me.

fragmare

lol no, not the windows. the sight glass on top of the receiver-drier... the little circular window that's maybe 3/8" in diameter that lets you peek into the A/C system and see what the refrigerant/oil is doing.

jbpnoman

Silly me, I was thinking "sight glass" was just a comically bad translation of "front windshield". Carry on then.

fragmare

bump

axis11

Cloudy sight glass means refrigerant passing thru it has not been 100% turned to liquid when it passed the condenser, the remaining refrigerant still in gas form appear as bubbles that cause the cloudiness. Its pretty normal on start up and should be liquid clear after a minute.

redm3turbo

raises hand...+ 1 lol

fragmare

Okay, that sounds good. I was worried it was under or over charged. It does turn clear after a minute or two and stays that way for the remainder of the time the engine is running.

On a side note, I did narrow down why it's not blowing as cold as it could be (and also why it's making a funny noise after acceleration when the A/C is on). The compressor belt keeps slipping side-to-side very slightly. As a result, it's making the clutch disengage a little bit when it does so. I'm going to try to loosen the tensioner bolt and tighten up the belt a bit. If that doesn't work then I'm pretty sure I put the pulley on the compressor ever so slightly crooked... I'm talking .001-.002 inches crooked, but since it's supposed to be a precise pressed fit, I'm betting that still makes a difference. Off to the garage to figure this out!