06 Suburu Forrester Ac Gets Warm Then Back Cold

My AC Compressor installation is a case study in why you should seek out a knowledgable professional AC auto mechanic. Or, at the very least, do your research before jumping in. I've probably reduced the life of my compressor down to that of a $100 used one off of ebay with the shade tree mechanic monkeying around that I've done.

I did not read the last two posts before jumping in. Had I done so, I probably would have found the threaded cap on the bottom of the compressor that exposes what appears to be an oil reservoir. Instead of filling this, I emptied it in order to make sure the system was as close to empty as possible. Not my compressor, but same model (almost)... yellow box is the reservior cap I'm talking about:

I tried to fill the AC system using the aforementioned technique of filling the yellow line with the system oil volume requirements. This was a fail because the yellow line is only open on one end. The oil will only go into the line at an extremely slow rate. I would have needed a syringe or similar and a half hour to let the oil drip in with this method. I used this method instead. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGpM8va2XFg. I was careful to use the required amount of oil. The oil was drawn into the High side using the vacuum pump. So, the compressor probably made a few hundred revolutions before seeing that oil charge.

After Emptying the compressor, I put it back in. I Flushed out the condenser and what is probably the drier or a filter on the side of the condenser.
Here's a picture of my old condenser. Dryer/Filter element might be the canister welded to the left side of it.

I meant to look at what is inside there but forgot. I regret not doing so now.This weekend I'll look inside of it and kick myself hard if I find some kind of porous filter material. The AC Flush can says to not flush out the filter or drier. Or expansion valve or compressor.

Then I removed the parts store TXV and used the remaining flushing solution to flush out the evaporator. I also Flushed out the lines. One of the lines was attached to the condenser, so that got flushed out with it. The high side line from the condenser to the TXV and the low side line from TXV to Compressor were flushed out separately. After flushing, with the flushing fluid, I used compressed shop air to force out the flushing fluid and help dry it.

The flushing solution came out clear after cleaning everything but the evaporator. The flushing solution that came out of the evaporator was oily for sure.

I put the oem txv back on with new o-rings. I reused the o-rings (they were only 1 week old) everywhere else. But cleaned and re-oiled all lines that get an o-ring.

After a vacuum leak pressure check and a 30+ minute evacuation, I pumped the oil in using the vacuum pump. Then I did another 30 minute evacuation. Then hooked the Refrigerant can up to the manifold and followed subaru's recharging procedure. After part of the 2nd 12 oz can was brought into the system, the compressor started to cycle on and off!

Unfortunately, now I have a low side low and high side high scenario. It was about 65 degrees outside when I was charging the system, which is below the lowest temp of 77 on subaru's pressure/temperature graph. At 77, I'm supposed to have 10-15 bar on the high side (HS) and 2-2.75 bar on the low side (LS) at 1500 rpm engine speed. At 1500 rpm, I was getting 16.5 - 18.5 bar HS and around 1.1 bar LS. At idle, I was getting 13-15 bar HS and 1.9 bar LS. With the AC Switched off, I saw 11.9 HS and 2.3 LS.

I'm now wondering if there could be something up with my OEM TXV. I watched a video of a AC pro diagnose an issue with a car and he found the TXV to be the issue. The HS and LS pressure was slow to equalize after turning the AC off. I looked at the pressures on my system after turning the engine off and it took 2 minutes for the HS to go from 15bar to 10 bar and the LS went from 2.2 to 3.1.

Any thoughts (other than stop screwing around and take it to a AC pro)?

I think I'll check my HS and LS again tomorrow to see if anything has changed. I don't think it would.

Thanks again.

06 Suburu Forrester Ac Gets Warm Then Back Cold

Source: https://autoacforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=13327&start=10

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