R12a refrigerant in place of R134a

Ken47

Ken47

Active Member
Supporting Member
Hi. I have a vintage air heat/cool/defrost system in my 47. It is installed but the AC part has never been charged or operated. It was bought back in 2003. In those days R134a was the replacement for R12. Now I see the Canadian government has restricted the use of R134a to AC shops only. You can’t seem to get, at least easily, small cans of R134a to DIY. I was hoping to do this myself.
I have read that R12a is a drop-in replacement for R134a. I contacted vintage air and they have not tested R12a in their systems as small cans of R134a are still readily available in the US.
So my questions are:
1) Has anyone made the switch from R134a to R12a? What was your experience? How did the system perform?
2) if you did, did you have to make any other changes to the system? I’m thinking the trinary switch (pressure set points) or compressor oil may not be suitable/compatible.
Any other thoughts or ideas would be greatly appreciated.
 
I took two vehicles to the pros for 134a. Both were vintage air units. No one here recommends R12a at all. Plus they pressure checked for leaks before charging. Some folks do not crimp the hoses correctly.
 
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Also I took my hoses to a local hose/hydraulic place and they used the wrong crimping tool on two lines. The charging shop was able to crimp them properly. The pressure test with dye discovered this.
 
My only experience with R12a is second hand. My brother blew up an engine once trying to recharge an R12 system with the Redtek stuff. Long story short, some escaped and got sucked into the intake of the running engine and since the refrigerant was essentially a mix of propane and isobutane it revved to the moon and developed a serious knock.

I did put together an a/c system in one of my cars by scrounging factory parts and setting it up for R134a, but the charging is something I left to the pros. Like PG409 stated the follow-up leak test is good value, along with having the system put under vacuum as recommended.

That’s just my experience, I totally understand the preference for a DIY solution.
 
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