Leaking Expansion Valve?
 

Ya think?

I bought my 300cd a decade or so ago, and I knew it had some history of AC leaks. I have all the receipts for the life of the car.

But it was still R-12 and it blew cold when I bought it, and any leakage was slow enough that for the three or so years that I used it before kids, I never added any. Then the car sat for ~6 years. And there was no AC.

I’ve been slowly getting the car back going again, doing some updates that I had meant to do, and others that have popped up. It was nice and cool until recently - now heat is here. So I wanted to troubleshoot. I don’t have bone dry nitrogen or R-22 for troubleshooting, but I could get some ES-12a for off road troubleshooting. I also got dye. So I installed this, and have run it a few hours. That stuff really does work well btw.

Mind you, I’ve never pulled the kick panel before, but did so to pull the blower to both look for dye and really to try to lube it as preventive maintenance. I got the panel down and was surprised to see it look oily down there.

https://i.imgur.com/GImtzD2l.jpg

And this!

https://i.imgur.com/iX3agNZl.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/VyZvq0zl.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/v3EcxCul.jpg

After I pulled the blower, I saw this:

https://i.imgur.com/1zzf6k7l.jpg

I’m guessing it’s just a bad o-ring, and the leaking refrigerant takes oil with it. Nothing under the kick panel is particularly oily. The noise insulation has some on it, but it isn’t sopping wet or something. I guess the time without r-12 and oil on the seal caused it to dry and crack.

Thoughts?

Curious if anyone knows the correct sizes for the four o-rings for the connections to the expansion valve.

The santech o-ring kits are cheap and usually complete with all the o-rings you need for your car. Just lube them up before installing

I believe it takes one #6, one #10, and two #8 Orings.