Hello everyone, I have screwed up trying to get cooler air in the wife's HHR. it was slow to cool off, so in my limited wisdom I added some refrigerant to it and now I have no cold air at all !!! soooo guess who is in the dog house now...this guy!!
Where did I mess up, I have recharged MANY a/c units in the past, both mine and for friends without any problems. I got a charge kit from the local auto parts dealer, placed it on the only line it would fit ( the large line ) the car was running and the a/c was on, and now nothing!!!

 

Was the check engine light on? If so, Freon was not the problem.

You broke it, pay someone to fix it. That's as sage as I can be.

 

If you're not familiar with the difference between the high side and low side of AC systems, I would suggest you leave this one to the pros.
Serious injuries or even death can result from incorrectly "messing" around with a high pressure AC system.

Saying "the large line" gives me the chills(no pun intended)
Fwiw. If you did somehow incorrectly hook up to the wrong side(High side) it most likely would not take the replacement freon charge. The high side pressure is too high to let the freon enter,unless the system charge is very low.
If it was that low, the compressor would not engage anyway.

 

If you connected the charge hose to the "large" line, that is the low pressure line and when the A/C is working, it should be cold to the touch. On both our GM cars, it sweats like crazy and my wife's Caddy Deville has a foam cover to absorb the moisture while my lower class HHR does not! If you bought one of those chargers that has the little dial then they are made to NOT result in an over charge BUT they can cause a loss of charge! This loss results if the hose connector is not sealed tight or the little needle valve is not straight (like daughter's Taurus) which needs to be straightened or the new charge hose and valve is defective (had one of those with a leaky gauge).

A mechanic friend of mine said these R134 systems will only drop air temp to the inside about 30 degrees so if it is really hot outside such as AZ or NM or TX or other hot AND dry places then the A/C will never probably make you happy. I would suggest taking the car to a shop that specializes in this and spend some $$$$ to get it checked and see what is actually wrong. If you don't here is how I have done the troubleshooting for many years:

- Pull the batt connection to reset things.
- Start car with A/C off but temp dial set to min and air outlet to dash vents only.
- Listen under the hood to see if you can hear the compressor switch catch when your assistant turns on the fan to position 2 or 3 and have them verify the A/C indicator light comes on.
- Check that the coolant temp reading is climbing steadily as if there is no signal from the engine coolant temp then A/C will not work. Use both degrees reading and the little meter.
- Push the A/C recirc button and you should hear a change in the air flow sound.
- If it is really hot outside, spray some water on the condenser to see if air temp drops and/or the large (low press) line gets cold.

If these fail, then the shop with a set of A/C high and low pressure gauges will have to look at it. I went to the US Navy's AC&R school in 1969 and we covered this in one of the days as the old master chief said that someday we'll want to be able to check our own systems, he was right!

 

My guess would be you over charged the system. Too much refrigerant will result in no cooling.

At this point you need to take it to a shop that can reclaim the refrigerant and install the correct amount then recheck system performance.

 

recharge kit at Wallymart $35 to 40 bucks, reclaim and recharge at my local A/C shop $50.00 and they did the dirty work, checked for leaks and confirmed working just fine! priceless!!

 

As long as the OP's kit didn't have sealant in it. Shops generally don't want to deal with that because it will contaminatie their recovery/recharge machine.