Air con
 

The warmer weather has revealed the aircon is getting a little weak and not as chilly as it used to be. Can these be filled DIY? Is it professionals only system? Anyone know where the filling port (low pressure) is? I can see the high pressure is on the condenser.

Low pressure in plenum chamber on the near side from central air intake.

Ok, I can see a pressure switch next to the air intake. Is it near that?

I think so. In plenum chamber, in narrow slot between central air intake and box with ECUs.

In a tiny gap too small to fit an adult hand or the hose connectors... No idea how Audi charge these things up, unless they have a special adapter for them?

I ended up having to fill mine on the high side with the gas bottle in a bucket of hot water :D It took a while, but worked ok.

I'm getting mine re-charged at A8 Parts on the meet weekend - if any of you guys think you might want to have yours done there that are going then I advise you to call and book a slot for the Sunday +++

Groupon usually have some good deals for air con recharge, had my oldest's done for £19, which is less than half the price for the kit from Halfrauds.

Mine is leaking too, one year after having it recharged at the local Audi dealer, it went back to blowing warm (or the temp of the outside air).
Stealer wants £79 I believe under the fixed price servicing scheme.
£19 sounds amazing!

That's a great idea to re-fill at A8Parts if you are going to the annual meat or if you are close by anyway as you can be sure they are familiar with the car.

You can buy DIY refill kits but I would not bother. I had one that was given to me by a friend. He bought it because his AC was not working so he thought he needed to refill it but it turned out it was faulty pressure sensor. I think it cost £40 for the can and £10 for the filler nozzle which is not that good value when you can get service at garage or mobile aircon man starting from £35 depending on garage and location. They do state on the can that it is good for up to 3 re-fills but there is 450g of gas in can and car systems contain somewhere between 400g on newer cars and up to 1000g on older cars so you could potentially need 2 cans on almost empty older car. Also they do have oil added in cans and you need to shake it during filling but I guess if you use it several times you will not get uniform mix at all times so could be adding too much or too little oil. And the only way to check fill state is by the pressure indicated on the gauge while filling on the low pressure side with engine running. But the pressure will vary a lot depending on temperature and not sure how reliable this method would be on newer cars that use constantly running compressor with variable pressure valve instead of older clutch switched compressor. And if you think you can can keep it and use later forget about it, the kit I was given was about 90% full when I got it but when I wanted to used it 4 years later all the gas had escaped from the can.

Proper garage kit will use vacuum to evacuate system, hold vacuum to check for leaks and then fill system with the correct amount of gas and oil using weight in grams instead of pressure to check amount. It will also filter and dry the old gas for re-use.

Is there any one in particular we should speak to about this Neil?

A8 parts have the proper kit and as long as someone like Dezzy (his took over an hour possibly due to leaks😀) it should be all done and dusted within 15-20 mins.

I saw that groupon, it was only £28 so I caved in and booked it.
Its some place called ATS Euromaster, never heard of it before, I hope they are good. I too am weary of a place not familiar with our cars.

I relented and took it yesterday having gotten a voucher code. £39 sheets all done. Takes an hour, they can only use the high pressure port so it's drained, vac tested and then has to be filled into the high side which I assume slows it down a bit. They recovered about 330grams from the system (which needed 775g put back in) so it was half full. Not bad, it's the first time it needed filling in 8 years and was still making 15-18c air from the vents (so knocking 10c off of ambient). Yestderday it was making 9c and setting it to 18 on climate had it slowing the vent speed after 5 minutes of running which was rather pleasant in what I assume is the sum total of this years summer ��

Had the A6 re-filled yesterday at CS Autos in Northampton. It's been 5 years since buying car and air con has never been refilled, it's always on Auto meaning that aircon is always working when outside temperature is above +5C.
They recovered 430gr of gas and filled with 600gr so it had not lost too much. I cannot tell if it's any colder now but it definitely starts cooling faster.
I have not used Groupon before so I went to Groupon through topcashback.co.uk and got 8% cashback +£5 new customer first purchase cashback on top of already cheap £22 deal making total effective cost of £15.24

Probably need it doing on S8 as well as it's never been done in 9 years since buying it and not as cool as it used to be but still working which is pretty good considering some of my friends had theirs filled up, drive for 1 summer, then not in use for the winter and need filling up again next year. I think maybe keeping it on auto and on most of the time also circulates some oil and keep rubber seals in good condition but when it's off 90% off time rubber dries out and lets the gas out.

That is very cheap!
Its really good advice, I suspect mine only lasts 1 summer at a time because I very rarely use it. I'll try leaving it on auto after the refill and see how long it lasts.

After driving recently refilled A6 and S8 in some hot weather I can say that cooling performance on S8 is better even if aircon has never been serviced in 9 years I had car. A6 starts cooling almost instantly after re-fill but overall cooling performance has not changed, S8 takes a minute or 2 to start cooling but does better job after that. Not sure if I want to do anything with it at this point as I cannot use the same offer again. I think maybe if it ain't broken don't fix it.

On another note I have done some surveys among friends and it seems like I previously mentioned if you regularly use your aircon it seems to last forever but if you only use it occasionally you need to refill every 1-2 years and this even includes new cars. Obviously therre is slight fuel economy penalty if you use it all the time like me and I have not looked into how much money you loose on fuel compared to aircon re-fill. But I guess you don't need to run it all the time as long as you switch in on every now and again to get the gas circulating and draw some oil with it as well.

Eh, put those nails away, catty! No leaks on the Traders8 i'll have you know. Quite the opposite, it would not release the gas, so the machine would go into it's cycle but just hang at the "i should be sucking gas out" stage.

I reckon the 8 was getting IT back for bullying me. :p