My Volvo has a small hole in a bend on the 10mm ally pipe. I don't want to spend any more money on it as I need to sell it but ideally with air con working. Is it feasible that I can use a 10mm compression joint??
Nick
the regas cans will not work for a system that's been open to atmosphere. not enough gas in them, for a start... nearly empty? they'll just about do. also there's no way to pull the system down with a vacuum to get all the undesirable stuff out.
ideally use a Vulcan Lokring joint but the pliers will cost more than the cars worth! you need a proper car or bus AC specialist , also the system will need evacuating as said above so cans from halfrauds no use whatsoever.
could tig the pipe , it should be purged whilst welding to stop scale on inside of pipe and if its been open any significant time a new drier cartridge , AC cheap repairs suddenly get expensive if they go wrong
Well as an time served refrigeration engineer i'm sure after 40 years working in both service and system development for OEM level suppliers in the motor industry I know the difference between recharging a system using a prefilled canister and properly evacuating the system to a vacuum calculated from steam tables and then recharging to the designers calculated system charge weight. Ambient temperature affects charge weights massively .
To directly answer your question yes, I've picked up the pieces from DIY repairs, including second hand car dealers trying to do repairs on the cheap with 2nd hand parts
Copper fittings on an ali pipe that is likely to frequently get wet is not a good idea.
Some years ago, I fitted a new condenser, vacuumed the system out, and regassed using a Halfrauds canister and the system worked well until the car was sold several years later.
I've used SIF555 on one occassion. It's very impressive. It was interesting to see how much more tough the repair was compaared with the base metal. It's well worth having a few sticks to hand.