Recharging Air Conditioners for Dummies

Parts of an Auto Air Conditioner

In their research into the care and feeding of the freelance dumbass, the staff of the Antisocial Network have noticed that the species has several habits that are typical enough to identify one as a member. Chief among these habits is the rewording of authoritative sources in a vain attempt to avoid being nailed for plagiarism; as a result examples are often munged up and critical steps of procedures get omitted. That's what's happened with today's dumbass, already a two-time winner of the DotD award: he's eHow.com's Seth Amery, found here performing a poor rewrite of the instructions for "How to Re-Gas an Air Conditioner."¹

While most people would call the process "recharging," eHow's rules mean Seth's stuck with having to call it "re-gassing" (but he has other problems, too):

"When your air conditioner is not producing cold air as desired, you might need to refill the refrigerant, a process also known as re-gassing your air conditioner. You can perform this procedure if you keep a few safety tips in mind."

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of websites that will explain how to recharge an automotive A/C. Seth found a reference source that seems to be pretty good; but then he didn't bother to read it all. His instructions, such as they are, boil down to Find the fittings Connect the refrigerant can to the service hose and the hose to the low fitting Release refrigerant into the hose and fitting. Tada, you're done. OK, those are – pretty much – the correct steps... AFTER you've determined whether poor cooling is a result of low refrigerant and AFTER you've determined what type of refrigerant your system uses: R12? R134? R134a? And Seth? your little tip,

"If possible, use a gauge to monitor how much refrigerant you are putting into your car. The air conditioner will not produce the right amount of cold air if it's either underfilled or overfilled"...

...contains within itself clear evidence that the gauge isn't an option, it's a necessity.

Combined with a lack of information about how much refrigerant to add – a can? two cans? half a can? – and poor instructions on how to release the refrigerant from the can (do you think that perhaps the can comes with its own instructions, Seth?), Amery's little how-to is a classic example of the sort of material posted by a freelancing Dumbass of the Day. It's a bullshit job of rewording text the writer didn't understand, condensing it to fit into the DMS 500-word format. This time, it was over-condensed: fitting for a discussion of A/C, when you think about it...

¹ The original has been deleted by Leaf Group, but can still be accessed using the Wayback machine at archive.org. Its URL was    ehow.com/how_12155761_regas-air-conditioner.html

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