I'm trying to finish the dismantling of Betty. Pretty much the last things left are the engine and the A/C system.

I found a used Robinair 17400 (R12 only) recovery machine that was being liquidated by a local school district maintenance shop. Came with two empty cylinders.

Order some new gauges followed instructions to hook everything up. Blue line going to the port up on top, red line down behind the alternator. Yellow line goes into the machine. Hooked up the cylinder in same fashion with yellow line going to air purge port.

The only thing I wasn't able to do was to run the A/C system before beginning the recovery. Engine & electrical system is completely offline at this point.

Opened the valves on the gauges and cylinder, gauges should about 40psi on both side. Started up the machine in the order the manual states and everything sounds right. Compressor is on & so forth. Let it run for a while and the gauges don't go down. I'm expecting this to start pulling stuff out of the system, no?

Now, as a test, I shut it all down. Closed all the valves and checked to see if anything was in the cylinder. Cracked the gas valve open just a little. It had gas in there now, which it didn't before. But to shake the cylinder, I hear no condensed liquid in there. Should I?

Hooked it all back up and left it running for hours. Same thing.

Robinair says that the compressor will shutoff when done. How long should I expect a recovery of 3lbs R-12 to take?

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'85 300TD "Puff The Magic Wagon" - Rolling Resto
'19 Mazda CX-9 Signature - Wife's sled
'21 Morgan 3-Wheeler P101 Edition
'95 E300d - SOLD
'84 300TD "Brown Betty" - Miss this one
'81 240D "China Baby" - Farm grocery getter