Quote:
Originally Posted by spliteye
Thanks for the advice. I'll be living in the desert, unfortunately. If I understand correctly, the expansion valve on these cars is located behind the dash and difficult to get to? I converted my 1992 Ford F-250 IDI that I use to own, replaced all the hoses with barrier style hoses, flushed the compressor, evaporator core, condenser, replaced the accumulator and orifice tube. Bought an a/c manifold from Harbor Freight on sale and bought a small Robinair vacuum pump. In the end, I remember it working well, as long as the truck was moving and had continuous airflow through the condenser. In traffic it kind of blew (no pun intended). Funny thing though, I bought all that for several hundred less than a shop quoted me for just replacing the accumulator and "expansion valve" (liars) and a recharge.
I found another for $3K, looks just as clean (they say the a/c works too), however it has over 230K on it. Its understandable why people ask so much more if their cars have less than 200K. There aren't many available.
Dan
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The expansion valve is no problem to get to. It is located under the dash but is easy to remove and replace if you take off the kick panel and remove the glove box liner. There are guides with lots of pictures on doing both of those things on a W123 in the iFixit link in my signature.
If you did the conversion on your truck you'll find the conversion easy on the Benz as well. Nothing much different or any trickier. And indeed it can be done reasonably. I help a friend recently in doing a full refurb of his A/C (had gone for several years with the compressor not even installed, hoses open to the environment). Installed a refurbished compressor, new dryer and expansion valve, all new seals/o-rings, flushed everything, and so on. In the end the price tag was less than $500. No way you'd get out of any shop in my town for less than $2000 with the labor put in to the job.
Best of luck, sounds like you're on the right track.