R-1234YF – Good for the environment, bad for the wallet
Art’s Automotive is now offering testing, recharging and repair services for R-1234YF air conditioning systems for customers in Berkeley and the surrounding East Bay Area.
Call us for current pricing: 510-540-7093
As of this writing (2018) R-1234 is fairly new, at least in the Japanese vehicle repair market. Very few cars older than 2016 use this new type of refrigerant, so most of the cars will be under warranty still. However, we’ve been getting a lot of calls from body shops, and issues like rocks hitting the condenser aren’t covered by warranty, so we’ve seen enough interest in customer-pay repairs to make it worth investing $6000 in a new machine. Also, 77% of Honda’s fleet is now R-1234YF, and we repair a lot of Honda cars here.
R-1234YF is a desirable refrigerant because it does less environmental damage than most other types of refrigerant. As seen in the chart, the environmental impact of R-1234YF is considerably lower the the current refrigerant R-134a. The only “better” refrigerant is CO2, but currently Mercedes is the only manufacturer to use CO2, and we don’t repair Mercedes.
Image Courtesy of MACS (Mobile Air Conditioning Society)
Servicing a R-1234YF system is pretty much the same as servicing a R-134a system. Here are a few of the differences:
Some R-134a systems have an in-line heat exchanger (ILX), but all R-1234YF seem to have an ILX.
R-1234YF is mildly flammable.
R-1234YF is super-expensive. Catching leaks ASAP is very important to keeping your costs low.
Because R-1234YF is so expensive, some people are illegally charging systems with R134a
All R-1234YF machines have an on-board refrigerant identifier and won’t recover contaminated refrigerant.
The high side pressures are a lot higher than on the R-134a systems.
