Air con condensor, whats involved with installing a new one?

[patrolla]

My air con condensor has about one third of the fins pushed shut (was like that when i bought it a year ago) and so i was thinking about getting a new one.
Whats involved in swapping them over, is it just a matter of disconnecting all the pipes etc, pulling old out, new on in? I know nothing about air con systems.
Cheers

[MudRunnerTD]

Is there still gas in it? If so then you'd have to degas it too and then degas it. It is illegal to degas to atmosphere and it should be professionally reclaimed by an auto elec.

Take your grill off the car so you can get to the condenser and using a plastic knife or small screw driver just straighten them out if it is holding gas. They will be bent due to the previous owner hitting it with a high pressure washer.

[Robo]

our 93 DA mav had the same prob when we first got it.
that is, bent over flat "only under the air con fan".
You can straighten a few and or remove em altogether.
they are only about 3mm deep anyway and that will open it up again for air flow.
this will re-exposes approx the 20mm left to keep working till you can afford to replace the damaged unit,
or not worry if your happy.
I also managed to, 12 months later of removing first layer of bent fins get a 14" slim fan installed to replace 10" gen fan.
made a big improvement to the amount of cool air coming out the vents.

[bluengold]

Patrolla, unfortunately there is no way around having to go to a air con shop at some stage if you want to replace it. With air con systems they use a refrigerant which by law must be recovered. replacing the core is easy no problems its the refrigerant that you need in the system which you might have dramas with. if your replacing it go to someone that has a recovery unit.

[Irvs]

You also dont want to get anything else into the coil or system other than refrigerant gas. Most systems in commercial applications have nitro run through them to prevent premature failure of the compressor due to contaminants getting into the pipes while your swapping over.

Its not a difficult job but you need a vacc pump and a bottle to store the refrigerant in and by the time thats all said and done it pretty much means its a specialist job so you may aswell just get the auto elec to do it.

Either that or rope a fridgy mate into doing it.