can't top off R1234yf refrigerant
I'm losing my mind.
My daughter's car refrigerant PSI drops too low when engine revs and stops cooling. My plan was to add enough PSI to keep it above 40 PSI when at higher RPMs.
I got this gauge and R1234y adapter kit as loaner tools from autozone, and bought a can of this Honeywell refrigerant.
I can't get the damn refrigerant to go into the damn system. I have it hooked up to the low pressure side. When I open the valve to the low pressure side, I see it go up about 10 PSI and then just sit there. When I close the valve it drops back down. Nothing added.
The first can I swapped out because it seemed like the can itself was defective. When I had only the can tap on the can, I turned the tap all the way and nothing would come out. If I loosened the connection between the can and the tap I would get a little flow but not much. By the time I had attempted to check all the components on the can side, I had taken the tap on and off 4 or 5 times and the can was now slow leaking. I was doing this in the parking lot of autozone so I asked to swap out the can.
At that point I went home for the second attempt. This time I tested with just the tap, got some flow. Added the left hand adapter that has to go on the tap. Opened the tap and hit the little schrader valve thing to verify I had flow. Closed the tap. Attached the yellow hose. Opened the tap. Verified I had flow. Attached the hose to the gauge setup. Hit the schrader on the yellow hose connector to purge the air in the hose. I still had flow, but I this point I could tell that it didn't seem like very much PSI. What the hell, I'll try it anyway. That's when I experienced the above where I opened the valve on the low pressure side and the needle jumped a bit, but then returned to the same spot when I closed the valve. At this point I'm most def losing my shit.
So now I try to figure out where the loss in pressure is happening. It seems like it's happening at the left hand adapter that comes with the adapter kit. But of course this is hard to tell since I don't have something else to hook this up to or any kind of pressure read out from the yellow hose/can. I also don't want to be purging this stuff AT ALL, but at this point I feel like a total idiot.
Am I missing something obvious? I feel crazy.