How to tell if your AC is low on Refrigerant

How do I know if my air conditioning refrigerant or freon is low? That’s the trending question right now. Welcome to Mercie J Auto Care, where compassion and craftsmanship come together. I’m Rick smith, master certified technician.

Now typically if air conditioning is not as cold as it should be, it’s going to be one of 2 issues. It’s either going to be low refrigerant or freon or it’s going to be a problem with the air flow inside the car. We either blow air over the evaporator, which is what I call the ice cube of the car, or over the heater core which is the hot part. So if the door is messed up, it will blow over the heater instead of the evaporator. We could also have a problem with the fan out front. We’ve got to make sure it’s blowing air over the condenser so that the system functions properly. Here’s simply how we check it at the shop before we do any diagnostics. The refrigerant goes into the car and it and then it goes through that evaporator and then it comes out. Now you’ll have 2 air conditioning lines, 1 is small, 1 is large. When the car is running and the air conditioning’s on, be careful, the small one is extremely hot. So all I actually do is I feel this larger line. Whatever temperature that larger line is, that’s what the temperature of the evaporator inside is. So if it’s very cold, likely my refrigerants at the right level. If it’s barely cool or even warm it can even be almost room temperature and still have cold air coming out of the vents. Regardless, whatever that is that’s about the temperature of the evaporator at the end of its cycle. So that can give you a little bit of an idea otherwise we have to use equipment like gauges and things like that, but that’s a quick check to maybe give you an idea of where to go. Thanks for watching and until next time, same travels and blessings to you.