Factory AC can work great with R-134A if you know a few secrets

j_anderson said

Going through mine soon. I took the bracket off to have it powder coated and want to go through it before I put everything back together. In the video they mention the rubber ball on the spring that can sometimes flatten out and that they use a ball bearing as a replacement instead. When you rebuilt yours, did you have any issues with that? Can you link me to the rebuild kit you used? TIA

Click to expand...

So that is the rub... the pandemic has dried up the normal seal kits that are available. I have scoured eBay for NOS and spent too much....

You can get piston/rod kits with the necessary gaskets on eBay for around $30 each right now. 2 kits gives you the gaskets. The NOS shaft seal gives you all but the large o-ring for the housing. With that what you need is the o-ring for the oil pump cover and the mentioned shaft seal housing. I have not done it yet but you can get the o-rings from Orings-Online - O-rings and more... Gaskets, Seals, FDA, Sheet, Cord, O-ring Store, Food Grade O Rings, FDA Compliant O-rings but you need to measure them out and figure out what to order. I have not done that yet. Maybe you can find NOS, I have not tried that yet either.

This was a newer housing and did not have the check ball, that was eliminated in later years. I have found a couple threads where it was found that new remanufactured units did not have the ball and spring in them so life expectancy on those would be minimal.

Not a lot of help I know.