remmington
Apprentice
Owns Spark Eroder
Posts: 4,971
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Post by remmington on May 6, 2023 18:08:09 GMT 1
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Post by OldGit on May 6, 2023 18:46:39 GMT 1
Cheers Matey!
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Post by OldGit on May 23, 2023 17:57:20 GMT 1
Ended up making this, mostly offcuts - bought the wheels & hand grips from fleabay
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remmington
Apprentice
Owns Spark Eroder
Posts: 4,971
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Post by remmington on May 23, 2023 19:52:44 GMT 1
looks good OldGit ------------ Question? My Nitrogen test kit - goes on lowside of aircon system. But mine has reg from bottle - THEN shut off valve and another gauge - for doing "leak down tests" with... I am making a new test kit up for use with the new leak testing gas that has got Hydrogen in it - so you can use a LEL sniffer to find leaks. LEL meter will find propane as well. LEL sniffer is not a fluorinated gas sniffer (I got one of these and they about as useful as a chocolate teapot)
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Post by OldGit on May 23, 2023 20:06:23 GMT 1
To be honest, I usually go to a manifold set from the Nitrogen bottle then to the system, pushing around 20bar (max system pressure is around 36-40 bar at high ambient so well within limits) shut off the nitrogen and leave overnight with the gauges on. Vacuum gauges rarely show up anything other than a blatant leak that even the cheapest sniffer will find - the system works under pressure so why test the opposite way to how it's designed to work!
The sniffer I use is pretty reliable but needs residual refrigerant - Elitech ILD-200 Infrared Leak Detector, works with R410, R134 & R1234-yf not cheap but has picked up leaks on previously 'no leak detected' systems.
ETA - it doesn't matter which side you connect to, it's a closed system so at rest low side should equal high side pressure, even if the filter-drier is restricted or the thermostatic valve is faulty. Operational issues are very different diagnostically to leaks, of course you need to make sure the system is leak-free and correctly charged, I've seen systems that are 'faulty' purely because they have too much oil in them.
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remmington
Apprentice
Owns Spark Eroder
Posts: 4,971
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Post by remmington on May 23, 2023 20:41:00 GMT 1
To be honest, I usually go to a manifold set from the Nitrogen bottle then to the system, pushing around 20bar (max system pressure is around 36-40 bar at high ambient so well within limits) shut off the nitrogen and leave overnight with the gauges on. Vacuum gauges rarely show up anything other than a blatant leak that even the cheapest sniffer will find - the system works under pressure so why test the opposite way to how it's designed to work!
The sniffer I use is pretty reliable but needs residual refrigerant - Elitech ILD-200 Infrared Leak Detector, works with R410, R134 & R1234-yf not cheap but has picked up leaks on previously 'no leak detected' systems. ETA - it doesn't matter which side you connect to, it's a closed system so at rest low side should equal high side pressure, even if the filter-drier is restricted or the thermostatic valve is faulty. Operational issues are very different diagnostically to leaks, of course you need to make sure the system is leak-free and correctly charged, I've seen systems that are 'faulty' purely because they have too much oil in them.
I got two sniffers for aircon leaks - Newish Robinair LD7 (proper spendy £400+) - plus an Italian TIF XP-1A which has a pump in it - at about the £180 I paid - it is the best tool out of the pair of them. I used to have an older Robinair 16500 - which came with a secondhand aircon machine I bought - this was sniffer was hopeless. I do allot of aircon work - real wanna get into LEL leak testing - I think it is the way forward.
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