Ok so I bought a sedan and the ac blows but not cold my question is do I just have to buy the retrofit kit at autozone and install that? Also can the r134 be used with the old oil thats in there? And last question is the retrofit kit from autozone good or is the honda one better?

 

I'm going to give you some advice that will save you money in the end. Whether or not you take it is up to you. I have travelled this road and spent a lot of money to find out exactly what is needed to get the A/C of an EF Civic working to perfection. This is what you need:

1) A new Honda Evaporator.
2) A new condenser of any brand.
3) A rebuilt compressor from any reputable rebuilder, with the oil already in the compressor that will be compatible with R12. Compressors O' The World is who I went with, on Ebay. Been running that compressor for over a year with no issues.
4) A new dryer. That will usually come with the compressor, depending on who you choose to supply you with it.
5) A new R-12 compatible o-ring set. The o-ring set you get with your compressor will not likely have the correct size of O-rings, but you can find them at Autotzone, in the Help packages.
6) Some brake cleaner.
7) An A/C vacuum pump. Harbor Freight pump is fine. Borrow one if you can. They are not for rent...........from anywhere.
8) A gauge set for R12, or you can use the R134 gauges if you use the adapters for R134 on your R12 fittings on the hard lines. You can get a kit with those at Autozone.
9) However much R-12 Freon it says to use, under the hood of your car. I forget and am too lazy to walk out there right now. You can get it off craigslist very cheaply. R-12 is so old now that there is nobody searching for it anymore, so the old hoarders are forced to sell it cheap since they were too greedy and thought they were holding on to gold.
10) New discharge and suction hoses. I used O-Reilly's hoses and they worked fine.

Pull all the old **** out. Clean the hard lines with brake cleaner. Let them dry. Put all new **** in. Pull vac for 1 hour only. Any more than that and you will evaporate the lubrication. Let it sit under vac but with the pump off for an hour to see if there are any leaks. If there is not, disconnect the pump and put in your R-12. See YouTube (Eric the Car Guy) for how to do that stuff.

WHAM!! 33-degree air for about 800 bucks. Absolutely NOTHING else will work as well. R-134 requires a large evaporator. The R-12 evaporators are much smaller and cannot be retrofitted to work correctly with R-134. Will you get 45-50 degree air with R-134? Sure. Will that do you any good at all when it's 100 degrees outside? No.

 

^ Thank you for all the info but I just bought the car and I guess im looking for the "cheap" way out at the moment. Ive driven my HB here in florida for a year now without ac so having 40-55 degrees ac will be a plus for me. So right now as it sits I could use r12 with it and is it hard to find?

 

You see, the issue is that something happened to cause the A/C to stop working correctly. The most common cause is a leak in the system due to a rubbed A/C line or a rock into the condenser. The second most common issue is the compressor detonating and sending metal debris throughout your A/C system. When that happens, you have to remove all the components and flush them out with an A/C system flush solvent, which also requires buying a flush gun. So, even if you were to replace your compressor without flushing the system, then there is a chance that there is metal in the system and that it would just clog everything up, like the evaporator, condenser, or dryer. Then you will have wasted $220 on the compressor and dryer, and another $50 on Freon/oil. Also, look on the rubber section of your suction and discharge hoses, right near your compressor. Do they still say R12 on them? If so, they have to be replaced as well. R134 molecules are smaller and will eventually seep out through that old R12 hose. It just wasn't made for R134.

What I'm trying to tell you is that there is NO cheap way to do this.

If you really want to go for it, though, look at your suction and discharge lines, near the evaporator (by the firewall.) See if the R134 adapters are on there. If they are, someone already tried to put the conversion kit on there and you likely had R134 in the system already. See pic below of what the adapter looks like.



If it has been converted to R134, it means that you do not have to buy new adapters. If it hasn't:
1) Buy the adapter kit and a set of new Schrader valve inserts. They're just like the inserts you put in Bicycle tires. You can get the adapters and inserts at Autozone.
2) Determine if your compressor clutch is shot. Is the belt on there? If it isn't, put one on. With the car running, turn on your A/C button, turn on the fan button, then see if the clutch on your compressor kicked on.
If the clutch kicked on, you must have a good clutch and enough Freon pressure to cause the pressure-cycling switch to enable the compressor clutch. That would be a good sign. Unfortunately, that probably won't be the case. If the clutch didn't kick on, check the voltage at the connector circled in red below.

If you have no voltage, you can check the relay or fuse, but more than likely you just have an empty A/C system. The easiest thing to do is just run a jumper wire from the batter to that connector and see if you can get the clutch to kick on that way. If it does kick on with the jumper on there, that means the clutch is good and you have an empty system. If the clutch does not kick on, even with the jumper, you have a bad clutch and need to replace the compressor anyway.
3) Buy or borrow a set of manifold gauges for R134. I bought mine at Harbor Freight for $55, on sale. Watch YouTube (EricTheCarGuy) on how to hook up the gauges and see if you have any pressure in the system. You probably don't.
4) Buy or borrow a vacuum pump for A/C systems. I bought mine on Craigslist. Most people buy them, use them once, then sell them cheap. Hook it up and suck down your system for an hour. Turn it off, following the YouTube instructions for how to isolate the sytem, then wait an hour to see if it leaks. It likely will have a leak.
5) Now go back to my previous post and get your credit card out.