Thread: R12 or R134A ?

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Getting ready to buy my compressor for my A/C. Whats the difference between the Sanden 508/R12 or the 508/134. and what would be my best bet? I'm putting this in my 39 Chevy with the Vintage Air under dash mount Heat/Cool/Defrost. Also, do I need to put a dryer on this system?
any help appreciated.

r-12 has to be refilled in a shop vs r134 u can buy yourself IMHO r-12 is 10 times colder then r134 but like i said thats just MHO

Do 134. Does anyone still make R-12? Geesh,when I got certified they said that even the production of 12 would be outlawed! 134 will cool you fine,trust me,,,before I got disabled I was a liscensed HVAC contractor and though I don't believe 1(one) word about the ozone danger I can tell you that a 134 system will do fine.

R-12 has been pretty much gone on the retail market for years, and like gassersrule_196 said, you have to go to a shop to have it refilled. The last time I had my '84 Ford refilled ( it has not been converted to 134 yet) the cost was many times higher than if I had 134. The a/c shop owner is a personal friend, and he had to charge even me more than usual, as his cost has gone through the roof.

Supposedly, 134 isn't as efficient, but doesn't attack the ozone layer, which is why R 12 is going away. As for the drier, I thought all a/c systems had to have these. What does the manufacturer of the system say?

In a properly sized, installed system, the 134 should cool a rod sized car just fine IMO, but I am far from an a/c expert.


Don

R-134 will do just fine in a system designed for it. It's my understanding that Vintage Air redesigned the condensors in their systems to make the system more efficient.

go 134, your pocket book will thank you.

Originally Posted by lt1s10

go 134, your pocket book will thank you.

and yes you need a new dryer. if you have a system with 134 in it and it want cool your car, you have other problems.

Thanks Guys for the Help, I ordered the Sanden 508 set up for 134 and a dryer.

Just to make something clear, R-12 does not attack the ozone layer. Global production of R-12 has gone up 10-fold since the US ban of it and the "ozone holes" have all dissapeared.

The ozone depletion was a theory developed by some whacko scientist that managed to get a bunch of other whacko scientists to believe in his theory and eveyone jumped on the bandwagon probably at the behest of DuPont. I believed that about as much as I believe in global warming.

whats funny is i knew a guy who worked in refirgeration a while back and he said they always taught them to turn a person on there side or stomach if they breathed in refridgerant to let it flow out of their lungs as its heavier then air. i say if its heavier then air how the hell did it get way up there!?!?!?!

Originally Posted by NTFDAY

The ozone depletion was a theory developed by some whacko scientist that managed to get a bunch of other whacko scientists to believe in his theory and eveyone jumped on the bandwagon probably at the behest of DuPont. I believed that about as much as I believe in global warming.

and the gov. will give them all kinds of grant money to try to prove their theory.

The big hoo-ha over R12 came about the exact same time that the patent expired / required renual. Coincidence? now, I haven't been in the 'biz' for about ten years now, but when I was going to tech, and got my certification, there was a product called 'hotshot' which was a drop-in alternative for 12, and it was a mix ( or perhaps a blend ) of 12, 22, and something else. Now, if 12 is bad, how does mixing it with something else make it good? 12 is and always will be more efficient than 134, even if you can't spell efficient. also, it is and always will be manufactured, just not here in the US perhaps. Mexico is taking full advantage of the ozone layer fiasco to reap big profit manufacturing 12 and shipping it to whatever country is intrested. Another caveat about the big ozone hole... it was right over an active volcano.
hmmm