it is with a manly tear that i must say farewell to my 88 lincoln towncar. i must needs trash it. the a/c system is mighty, mighty nice and i hate to think that when i take it to the scrap yard that all of that expensive freon will be crushed and dissipate into the atmosphere. can i recover/save it myself? how about an actual market for selling it?
thanks,
hh
Unfortunately, the proper equipment you would need to recover maybe 3-4 pounds of freon would greatly outweigh any money you’d get for it.
ok…how about selling it to those with the proper equipment. is this an accepted practice? and if so, to whom would i go?
The junkyard is required to recover any freon that is in the system before the car is scrapped.
You would need a licensce to recover or even handle it. If you even thought about selling it yourself the EPA would probably show up at your door.
So basically no, just let it go, unless of course you have a friend with a refridgeration licensce and the neccesary equipment, it’s really not worth it.
You can by hooking up a empty freon cylinder to the high side, start the engine and run the A/C (you will need to bypass the low pressure cut out switch). You will actually pump the freon into your cylinder and draw a partial vaccume in the system.
Also you could use an old compressor from a refrigerator fitted with valves to pump the freon out and draw a very good vacume in the system.
there is plenty of value in R-12 and junkyards are not about to let $ slip into thin air.
Also you can take an online coruse and qualify to handle r-12 for about $30, which includes the EPA certificate.
Refrigerant cylinders have one-way valves on them. The main reason is to prevent them from exploding if they’re connected to the system’s high-pressure side by mistake. You’re talking about connecting one to the high-pressure side on purpose. Not wise. Regardless, because of the one-way valve, you’re not going to get anything into the cylinder.
When I reclaim refrigerant from any car, I first test the stuff with my $1300 refrigerant identifier to make sure it’s pure. A number of cars have had various alternative refrigerants put into them, which makes the entirety of what’s in the system worthless. Actually worse than worthless–if a shop were to put this stuff into another car (which is the obvious intent when reclaiming), it could mess up that car’s system, possibly resulting in major expense to put it back right. There is simply NO way to be sure the stuff is pure without using an identifier. And if it isn’t pure, I’m not touching it.
The next step is to hook up my $100 gauges and connect to my $3500 EPA approved reclaiming machine, and withdraw the refrigerant. The machine filters and processes it so it’s suitable for reuse. A rough approximation of the amount withdrawn can be made, but an exact measurement is not possible with the equipment used.
As you can imagine, I charge for the above services. I might consider taking the refrigerant as compensation, if I can ascertain that enough of it was reclaimed to make it worthwhile. But there’s no way I’m going to pay for it.
The salvage yard considers reusable refrigerant to be a salable part of the car, like a fender or axle. They count on getting a certain amount of salable items off of each car they take in, and are not going to pay extra for the refrigerant–especially since they don’t know whether it’s pure and reusable yet.
I don’t see any feasible way to get cash for the stuff that’s in the car’s system.
Since my R-12 days are over, I can only tell you what could be done at one time. The tanks of r-12 did not have a one way valve and some compainies used to a fitting that screwed onto an old R12 tank to convert in to a compressed air tank that someone could fill at a gas station and store at home (to fill a flat tire when needed).
I would work with two R-12 tanks, one new freon and one recycled freon. When I had to service my A/C I would use the above method to reclame some freon before I would open the system. Once a repair was made I would use the reclamed freon 1st (and there was liquid in there) Then top it off w/ new freon. The recycled freon I used for my own personal use and it usually went right back into the car it came from. Also I knew the refridgerant history of my cars and knew it was pure stuff.