junk yard pulling good AC system.

I came across a pristine 99 (IIRC) exp sport at the junk yard (pristine under the hood, looked like it got wacked in the rear.

anyway I have been thinking about converting my 92 R-12 sys to a 134a, and was wondering if I could pull the entire system (comp/cond/evap) under pressure (not disconnecting any fittings or hoses) so I dont have to get the 134a recovered.

Besides the problem of keeping everything hooked up IF I could get it out, I wonder If its possible to clear all the other stuff out of the way enough to do this. Not sure if the evap would work in the 92 box, but looked like the cond and comp would be ok. Hose routing was a bit different but it was a 4.0 like mine.

If you are looking at a U-Pull-It lot, check with the guys at the counter. I'm 95% sure they will tell you the same thing they told me. State/Federal EPA regulations require them to correctly remove and capture all contaminating fluids (including R134a) prior to placing them in the yard to be picked over.

I have owned and worked on both 1st and second gen A/C units. The one thing I remember about them is the hose routing were not the same, and especially dryer/accumulator can had different configurations coming out of the top so that they would receive hoses in one generation, but would be facing the opposite way for the other generation.

Good luck.

Yep, breakers yards are required to recover the refrigerant (and the rest of the fluids) before anyone has a chance to just dump the system to the atmosphere.

On the upside, they're required to use recovery equipment so they cant just punch a hole in it like they do most oil pans.

On the downside, I've seem many that are too lazy to properly recover all the refrigerant so there might still be some left in the system (bad for the environment, good to keep the insides of the system components clean!)

Individual pieces are easy to remove, for the evap, the engine bay half of the air box needs to come out, but that's only 4 bolts, three pretty easy on the engine bay side, one under the glove box. Just gotta get the cruise control and fluids reservoirs out of the way but that's only a few extra bolts.

Many of the hoses need a collar type tool to separate, cheap plastic ones work well but there are a number of different types and price ranges for them.