legacycentral bbs

I pulled the condensor out today in prep for pulling the motor. I blew it out a little with compressed air, and had a decent amount of metal flakes end up on the paper towel.

More then likely from the compressor seizing.....and might even be from the previous one too, since I didn't pull the condensor out last time I flushed everything.

So I'm wondering if I should get another condensor, or if I can even try and clean this one out well enough to reuse it.

Hopefully the evaporator didn't get any metal flakes in it. I would assume the receiver/drier would catch them, but I haven't dug into yet.

I'm going to see if anyone has one laying around, but if not, I may have to reuse this one, or buy a new one.

here's a pic. It's beat
http://www.main.experiencetherave.com:8 ... P_4930.JPG

Any thoughts?

You could try flushing it out if you like. Flush it in as many separate pieces as you can. Definitely flush the condenser by itself.

I assume you'll be replacing the receiver/drier since you've opened the system up.

I've been told that you usually can get away with not replacing the evaporator... If crud gets into the evaporator it's usually small enough to keep going and get back out, especially if you flush it. Or maybe if stuff makes it there it just tends to stay. I dunno.

You may want to replace the expansion valve, since stuff does tend to get stuck around there. I don't know how involved that process is.

If you can get this condenser to flush clean and if you can straighten some of those fins out with tweezers or something, it should do just fine.

that's really not so bad. No major shots (birds, animals, etc)

Have you ever seen a radiator fin comb ? My dad picked one up for straightening fins on his old cars. works great and has five different spacings to choose from.

I ended up picking up a condensor from blackbart for cheap. So I'm just going to use that. I'll flush that one out, and flush everything out real good.

My concern with the expansion valve is that right now there's this wrap around the valve's temp sensing unit, and I may have to remove it. I'm not sure, I haven't yanked it out yet.

No I haven't ever seen a radiator fin comb, but it sounds like it'd be VERY useful. I'll do a search online and see what I come up with.