# Anyone recharge the AC on a Jetta?



## RockinEZ (Apr 29, 2015)

AC was cool not cold today after a month off in my 2013 Jetta. 

I am going to try one of the recharge kits tomorrow. I did some web reading and found the major brands were available at Wally World from $24 to $40 bucks. 

If you don't have a big leak it is possible the JuJu in the recharge kits can hold off a seal replacement for a while. 

Anyone else try this? 
If so how did it work?


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## LAuberX (Jun 3, 2014)

don't do it.

If refrigerant is leaking, so is lubrication oil... and the "kits" usually have "stop leak" which is a big NO NO.... and NO OIL that you compressor needs.

Go to an automotive A/C ONLY shop if you have on in the area... get the system checked with accurate gauges and go from there.

Lots of reasons A/C won't get cold.... sensors, pressure switches... just hooking up a "kit" is just not a good idea.


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## Slon (Dec 25, 2015)

Figure out what's wrong first.

The DIY kits are crap, you want a full gauge set at the very least and pretty much all kits just include 1 gauge - you want both for high and low. Assuming low refrigerant is even your issue - on a 2013 I doubt it's something that simple. I would suspect compressor or clutch on a car that new before I'd start dumping extra refrigerant in your system. Either way you won't know without a proper gauge set. You need to know your exact readings on high and low side before you add anything to your system.

Also yes you probably lost some oil - but not nearly as much as you did in refrigerant. It's a common mistake for people who have leaks to way overfill their system with oil - this actually breaks the compressor as it cannot compress the fluid oil. You have no way of figuring out how much residual oil you have without actually fully draining the compressor and doing that is probably going to do more harm than good for you a you will expose the internals to atmosphere and get humidity in there. A professional shop will fully flush the system and run hot dry air through it to remove any moisture before fully recharging it - you can only add refrigerant; so even if you do it all right you are only able to do half the job.

I've done all my AC work myself, but I know full well that I'm pretty much gambling on my compressor having too much or not enough oil or having significant humidity in the system (water reacts with R-132 and creates acid which kills your compressor). On the 4 cars that I worked on only 1 compressor actually failed a year after recharge which may or may not have been related - replaced that myself and so far so good.

In short you have to figure out if the cost of doing it yourself and getting it half right at best for ~$60 is sufficient savings over the ~$300 a shop will charge you to do it 100% right. Keep in mind the very real possibility that you will spend $60 and actually make things worse in the long run.


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