May 6, 2024 • 18 mins
With summer driving season and warm weather upon us now is the time to think about servicing your vehicles Air Conditioning. Here is the stand alone interview with Issac Nielsen of Mahle Aftermarket and we are coving the basics to upcoming changes to the category. Find more about Mahle Equipment at https://www.servicesolutions.mahle.com/eu/en/product-lines/arcticpro/
From May 4, 2024 1st Hour.
For more information about Ron Ananian, The Car Dr visit them at www.cardoctorshow.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Ronananian, you know the car's in trouble when you start
it up and there's a knocking sound from the front
of the motor. It's eleven thousand miles overdue, one hundred
and eighty five thousand miles Lincoln Town Car.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Like, yeah, that's so good. Don't underestimate the car Doctor.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
Now, the center is fairly universal in the sense that
maybe the same center that I would need on my
vehicle would sit on another vehicle. Are they that universal
or are they pretty model specific?
Speaker 1 (00:40):
They're universal up to the point of tank design and construction.
Speaker 4 (00:50):
Welcome to the radio home of ron Anian, the Car Doctor.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Since nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
This is where car owners the world overturned to for
their definitive opinion.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
And non automotive repair. If you're mechanics giving you a
busy signal, pick.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Up the phone and call in.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
The garage doors are open, but I am here to
take your calls at eight five five five six oh
ninety nine hundred and nah.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Thanks, I can arrange that heee.
Speaker 4 (01:18):
Running.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Hey listeners, thanks for stopping buying joining us today. I'm
Monoemi and the card Doctor obviously, and we're going to
kick off this hour and start right at the top
of Isaac Nielsen. He is a product engineer for Mala
Aftermarket and with the AC season right around the corner,
we thought it would be a great time to bring
Isaac back. We've had him here before and talk a
little bit about air conditioning, the new, the old, the good,
the bad, and the dues and the don'ts Isaac, welcome
(01:41):
back to the Car Doctor, sir. It's a pleasure to
have you.
Speaker 4 (01:44):
Yeah, thanks for having me Ron.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
You know, let's start at the beginning. If if someone
is looking to get their AC service, we're not going
to talk about if it's one thirty four, twelve twelve
thirty four yf We're just I want to get the
AC serviced in my you know, five, ten, fifteen year
old car. You know, they're going to take it into
a shop. And what would the person reasonably expect the
(02:07):
shop to do to service that air conditioning properly.
Speaker 4 (02:12):
Well, the very first thing for them to do is
to check the pressures, see if there's even any refrigerant
left in the system. The most of the cases you're
lower basically out of you know, free on a refrigerant
inside that system. So that's going to be indication that
there's a leak in that system, so they'll recover whatever
(02:34):
refrigerant if there is any, from that system, and perform
some sort of leak check on that system. You know,
that's been to be the primary thing is to find
that leak and fix it before they even attempt to
recharge your system. So that's you know, looking for seals
or condenser leaks, something like that a lot of times. Actually,
(02:57):
the most common failure point is the strader port on
the low side or high side service port right.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
Now, depending upon the system. If it's one thirty four,
there's a different leak check procedure. But if we're driving
a newer vehicle, something made since one or when did
twelve thirty four YF come about twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen,
which isn't so much mow, that's a seven year old
vehicle now already, it's a very different procedure, right that
they just can't if it has a leak. If it
(03:27):
has a leak on a one thirty four, well we
can kind of fill it even though it's illegal, but
the shop can get away with that. But twelve thirty
four YF, there's safety is in place to not allow
that that might cause that consumer to get a Hey,
you need you know, five hundred one thousand dollars worth
of repairs.
Speaker 4 (03:43):
Correct, correct, Yes, the one thirty four A machines, they
will do if you do pull a vacuum before a charge,
it will do a vacuum leak check. But there's nothing
on a lot of those one thirty four A machines
that'll prevent you from just doing a straight charge, so
you could bypass the vacuum leak check, which is obviously
(04:06):
defeating the whole purpose of bringing a vehicle in and
fixing the leak, so that there's you know, obviously not
as not as good on the okay, all right, well, yeah,
it's it's it's.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
It's well, it's yeah, take take a breath, brother, it's
it's it's it's it's not as good as it would be.
But I think your point where you're going is that,
you know, twelve thirty four yf due to the price
of the refrigerant, there's well not just the price, but
we're trying to keep the environment safe and clean. The
machines have a safety in them to require that it
(04:39):
get repaired before it gets filled, right, isn't that where
you're going with that?
Speaker 4 (04:43):
Yeah? Yeah, correct, Yeah, the twelve thirty four YF machines,
they're legislated that basically they have to pass not only
a vacuum leak check, but also a pressure leak check
before it'll even filled. There is no such thing as
a top off with a one two three four YF machine.
It has to pass all of both the vacuum and
the pressure leak testing before to leave an attempt to charge.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
So, just for giggles, Mike, I've got you know, I'm
a customer out here and I'm going to take my
car to an a seat to a shop for air
conditioning service and they don't have a machine. Is that
even possible in this day and age? Can a shop
not have an AC machine regardless of what type of
refrigerant we're talking about?
Speaker 4 (05:25):
No, According to the EPA, if you're going to service
any any vehicle that has refrigerant for pay, you have
to have an EPA certified and registered machine. So there's
no you know, use the old school days of just
using a scale in the gauges for the EPA requirements
(05:50):
that that's illegal and potentially I think around a twenty
thousand dollars, fine if they find you servicing refrigerant without
having proper equipment, and you look at.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
The specificity, which is a great word for air conditioning, right,
it's everything specific. It's the specificity of the amount of
refrigerant that goes into some of these cars. It's such
a small amount, there's no guessing. You know, when I
use my I've got a Mala machine. You know that,
and everybody else knows that when I use either one
of my Mala machines, my one thirty four, my one
two three four YF machine, it's so exact in the
(06:25):
way that it measure the refrigerant and and puts it in,
and there's there's just certain procedures. So I don't think,
you know, not only does it hurt the consumer if
they're going to a shop that doesn't have an AC machine,
I don't know how the shop is getting around it.
I mean, we all know that there's cheating going on
out there, but they're doing such a disservice to both themselves,
the environment, and the customer that it ends up becoming
(06:47):
a bigger problem than it.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
Needs to be.
Speaker 4 (06:50):
Yeah, I mean, all these machines that are on sale
now that are certified to the SAE requirements. They're required
to be able to measure refrigerant and charge refrigerant plus
or minus five grams, so extremely accurate compared to you know,
just looking at a gauge and a set scale.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
When people when a shop goes to charge a car
using a machine, let's talk about the Malla machines for example,
because I'm so familiar with that being.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
What they are.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
You know, sometimes there's a problem you can't get to
a low side fitting or you can't get to a
high side fitting. Can you talk about, you know, the
host selection process and why it matters.
Speaker 4 (07:32):
Yeah, so you can charge a car with just the
low side or just the high side, and you know
different machines will have different strategies. But you know, for
the Mala machines itself, we default to the LP HP selections,
so that means you are hooking up both sides, both
hoses at the same time. We actually recover through the
(07:57):
high side and the low side during that service, but
we would charge only on the high side. Now, if
you had just the LP connection available, we would of
course recover great directly from the LP port and then
charge partially with the LP port, we'd only do about
(08:19):
a fifty charge because we don't want to flood that
side of the circuit with liquid refrigerant because that would
be bad to lock up the compressor. And then what
we would do is actually prompt the user to start
the vehicle to have a vehicle assisted charge at that point,
so we allow the compressor of the vehicle to draw
(08:41):
on the rest of the charge. So this was good
for those really hot environments where it might be difficult
to fully charge a vehicle. So charging on the low
side and allowing the vehicle to draw in the remaining
charge is almost a guaranteed way to be able to
charge that vehicle.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
So not only does the machine ensure that you're getting
an accurate charge, it's it's doing it in a timely
manner that it doesn't hurt the system. Then it allows
the system to draw in on its own if if
you have to go in on a low side only
which correct you know, you're you're you're always in control
and you're always you know, getting the job done and
safety right, because ac can be a dangerous service if
(09:22):
you're not handling things correctly. So you know that machine
is also a part of that as well. Isaac, Let's
let's pull over and take a pause. When we come back,
a couple of things I want you to think about.
I want to talk about if somebody's out there and
they're getting their machine ready for the season, you know,
what should the shops be thinking about. I want you
to talk a little bit about. You know, there was
conversation in the industry about one thirty four A being
(09:44):
banned and I don't know where that went. I that
was supposed to happen the last year October November last year.
I don't know where that went. That just sort of
seemed to fall by the wayside. And then we talk
a little bit about, you know, oil recovery and what
the machines can do assisting us to put proper oil
charge back into the system, because that's a big part
of the machines as well. Right, so let's let's talk
(10:06):
about that. I'm Ronaninie in the car Doctor. I'm here
with Isaac Nielsen from Mala Aftermarket and we'll both return
right after this.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
Don't go away.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
For the best in car advice, Give Ron a call
eight five five five six zero nine nine zero zero.
Now back to Ron welcome back, Ronanini in the car doctor.
I'm here today as I was before with Isaac Nielsen.
He is a product engineer from Mala Aftermarket. Isaac, you're
still there.
Speaker 4 (11:01):
I didn't lose you yet, right, Yeah, I'm still here.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
Run cool, cool beans. Let let's start with the big stuff, right,
because that lit up the emails and the conversation on Facebook.
Everybody wanted to know is there a one thirty four band?
Did that ever go through? Or whatever happened with that?
Speaker 4 (11:16):
Well, from the OI perspective, model year twenty twenty five
vehicles is the absolute last model year to have one
thirty four A in new vehicles. So really, you know,
since the twenty five to five model year is basically
the middle of this year, I think the EPA says
no earlier than October twenty twenty four. October twenty fourth,
(11:41):
twenty twenty four is the final production date for any
new vehicles with one thirty four A. Everything after basically
from November of this year forward will all be yf
in the light duty sector okay?
Speaker 1 (11:56):
And then will will that limit thirty four refrigerant availability
for service?
Speaker 4 (12:05):
So yeah, the ETA has a mandate to limit total
hfc's in the environment proball production based off of the
twenty twenty volumes. So actually in twenty twenty two and
twenty twenty three they were down to ninety percent of
(12:25):
the twenty twenty volumes. But starting in twenty twenty four
here they are down to a sixty percent maximum manufacturing
capacity from those twenty twenty two volumes. But now that's
that's total hfc's but it will limit some of the
one thirty four A for sure that is produced and
(12:45):
available in the US.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
So we can expect, with probably a fair chance that
we can expect to see an increase a in the
price of one thirty four and be a reduction in
its availability in the coming years.
Speaker 4 (13:00):
Direct and the EPA is also looking at mandating more
documentation on the transfer of one thirty four A, and
they also want to see a minimum percentage of recovered
one thirty four A with every tank. So in other words,
(13:20):
in the future, it may not be possible to buy
completely new one thirty four A tanks without any reclaimed
one thirty four A involved.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
Interesting, so in other words, they're saying, if you don't
take any out, then you're not fixing the car and
you're defeating the whole purpose of what we're trying to do.
So they're going to monitor the leaks by looking at
what you recover.
Speaker 4 (13:43):
YEP. It'll be very interesting to see how they enforce
this and how this process is going to play out,
because they are looking to have not just any reclaimers
being able to reclaim this one thirty four A, but
they have to be certified. And you know, so your
tank has to come from one of these reclaimers, or
(14:06):
at least a portion of it.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
You know, I think one of the best features on
my mala Ac machines is the printers, right, And I
always thought that it gave me what's the word I'm
looking for, not credibility, but proof. Here's what I recovered,
here's what I charged with. And I've always I've always
said to myself, when does the government get involved? And
(14:29):
you know they're going to basically be looking over my
shoulder at the printer, going, well, he took a pound out,
he put two pounds in. You know this on this car.
You know they're going to be watching and I'm guessing, well,
the machines one day dial in and we took this out,
we put this in and that's how they're going to know.
You know, you wonder if they could do that, and
I guess the technology is there that they could, right.
Speaker 4 (14:51):
Yeah, the technology is there. However, Yeah, they're right now
they're looking at more of a paper record. They haven't
looked at the connected machines, so I mean, at least
far as keeping the shop data for you know, you
guys keep track of where you're at. You know, that's
why our onboard database is kind of nice to be
(15:12):
able to go through there and you don't have to
remember to write down every service all the time. Right,
you can go back through there or you know, print
them to your you know, send them as an email
or something to have a record that way. So that
way you're not having to keep all these paper lugs necessarily.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
Well, and that's you know, that's the advantage of a
MALA machine because they have that printer built in and
they have that ability to record all that. Talk a
little bit about we were having a conversation off air
at the start about reducing oil recovery in our in
our last couple of three minutes here, Isaac, you know
what was that all about? About how a shop can
reduce oil recovery and actually make a more effective recovery
(15:50):
of refrigerant.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
Can you talk about that?
Speaker 4 (15:53):
Yeah? So, I mean, obviously, if you are just going
to build a customer, Okay, you recover some oil, you're
going to try as a customer for that oil that
you inject. But if you run a fleet or you
know you're doing you know, some of your own services,
then you want to minimize the amount of oil that
you do recover. And especially on YF machines, every time
you recover oil you need to do a manual oil injection,
(16:16):
which can be kind of a pain and take some time,
you know, just a little bit more time in the service.
So doing certain things, there's some good tips around the
vehicle set up that will help minimize the amount of
oil that you do recover.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
And you know, I think one of the tips that
we were talking about was, you know, it was interesting,
like I actually I learned something from you today, Isaac
that and I hadn't I never thought of it like this,
but to do a refrigerant recovery on number one A
cool engine, right, we gave I gave you the example.
So if a car got dropped off on Tuesday and
you brought it in Wednesday morning, service the AC in
(16:53):
the morning prior to using the AC. The car is cool,
the AC hasn't been used recently, so there's less likelihood
of well, or there's less oil in suspension in the refrigerant, right,
and then.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
The most correct and then the machine won't.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
Recover as much. And then you talked a little bit
about the location of the low pressure and the high
pressure service ports in our last two minutes.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
What was that about.
Speaker 4 (17:19):
Yeah, So, I mean you can take a look at
the vehicle's AC layout and if you see something like
the LP port being relatively close to the compressor itself,
then that there is a high likelihood that during that
initial in rush of refrigement when you do a recovery,
it could pull some of that oil along with that.
(17:42):
So if you especially I've got a fleet service where
this is a known thing, you know, it's very quick
to determine how much oil you're pulling in, and if
it's a high amount, you know you can hook up
the HP only port and just redo a recovery on
the high side. That way, that would reduce the chances
(18:02):
of doing some pulling in some of that oil.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
You know, there's there's there's always a way with you
guys at Mala. You guys are always thinking, so I
appreciate that, Isaac. I really do listen. I you know,
our clock's running out. It's going to grab us. If
the listeners want more information, where's the website? Where do
they go?
Speaker 4 (18:19):
A service solution? Dot Mala m A h l E
dot com.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
Okay, cool beans, And I want to get you back.
There's other things I want to talk to you about.
And uh, I know you're busy. You're so hard to
get a hold of them. We appreciate your valuable time
being here with us today, Isaac. Is always was a pleasure, sir.
And you know we we expect create things from you
guys as you lead us into the future regarding AC machines,
as you have continued to do so and be the
pioneers that you are. Thanks Isaac, I appreciate your time today.
Speaker 4 (18:47):
All right, thank you, Ron, You're very welcome.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
I'm running any and the car doctor. I'll return right
after this.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
Don't go away.
Ronananian, you know the car's in trouble when you start
it up and there's a knocking sound from the front
of the motor. It's eleven thousand miles overdue, one hundred
and eighty five thousand miles Lincoln Town Car.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Like, yeah, that's so good. Don't underestimate the car Doctor.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
Now, the center is fairly universal in the sense that
maybe the same center that I would need on my
vehicle would sit on another vehicle. Are they that universal
or are they pretty model specific?
Speaker 1 (00:40):
They're universal up to the point of tank design and construction.
Speaker 4 (00:50):
Welcome to the radio home of ron Anian, the Car Doctor.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Since nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
This is where car owners the world overturned to for
their definitive opinion.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
And non automotive repair. If you're mechanics giving you a
busy signal, pick.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Up the phone and call in.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
The garage doors are open, but I am here to
take your calls at eight five five five six oh
ninety nine hundred and nah.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Thanks, I can arrange that heee.
Speaker 4 (01:18):
Running.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Hey listeners, thanks for stopping buying joining us today. I'm
Monoemi and the card Doctor obviously, and we're going to
kick off this hour and start right at the top
of Isaac Nielsen. He is a product engineer for Mala
Aftermarket and with the AC season right around the corner,
we thought it would be a great time to bring
Isaac back. We've had him here before and talk a
little bit about air conditioning, the new, the old, the good,
the bad, and the dues and the don'ts Isaac, welcome
(01:41):
back to the Car Doctor, sir. It's a pleasure to
have you.
Speaker 4 (01:44):
Yeah, thanks for having me Ron.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
You know, let's start at the beginning. If if someone
is looking to get their AC service, we're not going
to talk about if it's one thirty four, twelve twelve
thirty four yf We're just I want to get the
AC serviced in my you know, five, ten, fifteen year
old car. You know, they're going to take it into
a shop. And what would the person reasonably expect the
(02:07):
shop to do to service that air conditioning properly.
Speaker 4 (02:12):
Well, the very first thing for them to do is
to check the pressures, see if there's even any refrigerant
left in the system. The most of the cases you're
lower basically out of you know, free on a refrigerant
inside that system. So that's going to be indication that
there's a leak in that system, so they'll recover whatever
(02:34):
refrigerant if there is any, from that system, and perform
some sort of leak check on that system. You know,
that's been to be the primary thing is to find
that leak and fix it before they even attempt to
recharge your system. So that's you know, looking for seals
or condenser leaks, something like that a lot of times. Actually,
(02:57):
the most common failure point is the strader port on
the low side or high side service port right.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
Now, depending upon the system. If it's one thirty four,
there's a different leak check procedure. But if we're driving
a newer vehicle, something made since one or when did
twelve thirty four YF come about twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen,
which isn't so much mow, that's a seven year old
vehicle now already, it's a very different procedure, right that
they just can't if it has a leak. If it
(03:27):
has a leak on a one thirty four, well we
can kind of fill it even though it's illegal, but
the shop can get away with that. But twelve thirty
four YF, there's safety is in place to not allow
that that might cause that consumer to get a Hey,
you need you know, five hundred one thousand dollars worth
of repairs.
Speaker 4 (03:43):
Correct, correct, Yes, the one thirty four A machines, they
will do if you do pull a vacuum before a charge,
it will do a vacuum leak check. But there's nothing
on a lot of those one thirty four A machines
that'll prevent you from just doing a straight charge, so
you could bypass the vacuum leak check, which is obviously
(04:06):
defeating the whole purpose of bringing a vehicle in and
fixing the leak, so that there's you know, obviously not
as not as good on the okay, all right, well, yeah,
it's it's it's.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
It's well, it's yeah, take take a breath, brother, it's
it's it's it's it's not as good as it would be.
But I think your point where you're going is that,
you know, twelve thirty four yf due to the price
of the refrigerant, there's well not just the price, but
we're trying to keep the environment safe and clean. The
machines have a safety in them to require that it
(04:39):
get repaired before it gets filled, right, isn't that where
you're going with that?
Speaker 4 (04:43):
Yeah? Yeah, correct, Yeah, the twelve thirty four YF machines,
they're legislated that basically they have to pass not only
a vacuum leak check, but also a pressure leak check
before it'll even filled. There is no such thing as
a top off with a one two three four YF machine.
It has to pass all of both the vacuum and
the pressure leak testing before to leave an attempt to charge.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
So, just for giggles, Mike, I've got you know, I'm
a customer out here and I'm going to take my
car to an a seat to a shop for air
conditioning service and they don't have a machine. Is that
even possible in this day and age? Can a shop
not have an AC machine regardless of what type of
refrigerant we're talking about?
Speaker 4 (05:25):
No, According to the EPA, if you're going to service
any any vehicle that has refrigerant for pay, you have
to have an EPA certified and registered machine. So there's
no you know, use the old school days of just
using a scale in the gauges for the EPA requirements
(05:50):
that that's illegal and potentially I think around a twenty
thousand dollars, fine if they find you servicing refrigerant without
having proper equipment, and you look at.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
The specificity, which is a great word for air conditioning, right,
it's everything specific. It's the specificity of the amount of
refrigerant that goes into some of these cars. It's such
a small amount, there's no guessing. You know, when I
use my I've got a Mala machine. You know that,
and everybody else knows that when I use either one
of my Mala machines, my one thirty four, my one
two three four YF machine, it's so exact in the
(06:25):
way that it measure the refrigerant and and puts it in,
and there's there's just certain procedures. So I don't think,
you know, not only does it hurt the consumer if
they're going to a shop that doesn't have an AC machine,
I don't know how the shop is getting around it.
I mean, we all know that there's cheating going on
out there, but they're doing such a disservice to both themselves,
the environment, and the customer that it ends up becoming
(06:47):
a bigger problem than it.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
Needs to be.
Speaker 4 (06:50):
Yeah, I mean, all these machines that are on sale
now that are certified to the SAE requirements. They're required
to be able to measure refrigerant and charge refrigerant plus
or minus five grams, so extremely accurate compared to you know,
just looking at a gauge and a set scale.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
When people when a shop goes to charge a car
using a machine, let's talk about the Malla machines for example,
because I'm so familiar with that being.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
What they are.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
You know, sometimes there's a problem you can't get to
a low side fitting or you can't get to a
high side fitting. Can you talk about, you know, the
host selection process and why it matters.
Speaker 4 (07:32):
Yeah, so you can charge a car with just the
low side or just the high side, and you know
different machines will have different strategies. But you know, for
the Mala machines itself, we default to the LP HP selections,
so that means you are hooking up both sides, both
hoses at the same time. We actually recover through the
(07:57):
high side and the low side during that service, but
we would charge only on the high side. Now, if
you had just the LP connection available, we would of
course recover great directly from the LP port and then
charge partially with the LP port, we'd only do about
(08:19):
a fifty charge because we don't want to flood that
side of the circuit with liquid refrigerant because that would
be bad to lock up the compressor. And then what
we would do is actually prompt the user to start
the vehicle to have a vehicle assisted charge at that point,
so we allow the compressor of the vehicle to draw
(08:41):
on the rest of the charge. So this was good
for those really hot environments where it might be difficult
to fully charge a vehicle. So charging on the low
side and allowing the vehicle to draw in the remaining
charge is almost a guaranteed way to be able to
charge that vehicle.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
So not only does the machine ensure that you're getting
an accurate charge, it's it's doing it in a timely
manner that it doesn't hurt the system. Then it allows
the system to draw in on its own if if
you have to go in on a low side only
which correct you know, you're you're you're always in control
and you're always you know, getting the job done and
safety right, because ac can be a dangerous service if
(09:22):
you're not handling things correctly. So you know that machine
is also a part of that as well. Isaac, Let's
let's pull over and take a pause. When we come back,
a couple of things I want you to think about.
I want to talk about if somebody's out there and
they're getting their machine ready for the season, you know,
what should the shops be thinking about. I want you
to talk a little bit about. You know, there was
conversation in the industry about one thirty four A being
(09:44):
banned and I don't know where that went. I that
was supposed to happen the last year October November last year.
I don't know where that went. That just sort of
seemed to fall by the wayside. And then we talk
a little bit about, you know, oil recovery and what
the machines can do assisting us to put proper oil
charge back into the system, because that's a big part
of the machines as well. Right, so let's let's talk
(10:06):
about that. I'm Ronaninie in the car Doctor. I'm here
with Isaac Nielsen from Mala Aftermarket and we'll both return
right after this.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
Don't go away.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
For the best in car advice, Give Ron a call
eight five five five six zero nine nine zero zero.
Now back to Ron welcome back, Ronanini in the car doctor.
I'm here today as I was before with Isaac Nielsen.
He is a product engineer from Mala Aftermarket. Isaac, you're
still there.
Speaker 4 (11:01):
I didn't lose you yet, right, Yeah, I'm still here.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
Run cool, cool beans. Let let's start with the big stuff, right,
because that lit up the emails and the conversation on Facebook.
Everybody wanted to know is there a one thirty four band?
Did that ever go through? Or whatever happened with that?
Speaker 4 (11:16):
Well, from the OI perspective, model year twenty twenty five
vehicles is the absolute last model year to have one
thirty four A in new vehicles. So really, you know,
since the twenty five to five model year is basically
the middle of this year, I think the EPA says
no earlier than October twenty twenty four. October twenty fourth,
(11:41):
twenty twenty four is the final production date for any
new vehicles with one thirty four A. Everything after basically
from November of this year forward will all be yf
in the light duty sector okay?
Speaker 1 (11:56):
And then will will that limit thirty four refrigerant availability
for service?
Speaker 4 (12:05):
So yeah, the ETA has a mandate to limit total
hfc's in the environment proball production based off of the
twenty twenty volumes. So actually in twenty twenty two and
twenty twenty three they were down to ninety percent of
(12:25):
the twenty twenty volumes. But starting in twenty twenty four
here they are down to a sixty percent maximum manufacturing
capacity from those twenty twenty two volumes. But now that's
that's total hfc's but it will limit some of the
one thirty four A for sure that is produced and
(12:45):
available in the US.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
So we can expect, with probably a fair chance that
we can expect to see an increase a in the
price of one thirty four and be a reduction in
its availability in the coming years.
Speaker 4 (13:00):
Direct and the EPA is also looking at mandating more
documentation on the transfer of one thirty four A, and
they also want to see a minimum percentage of recovered
one thirty four A with every tank. So in other words,
(13:20):
in the future, it may not be possible to buy
completely new one thirty four A tanks without any reclaimed
one thirty four A involved.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
Interesting, so in other words, they're saying, if you don't
take any out, then you're not fixing the car and
you're defeating the whole purpose of what we're trying to do.
So they're going to monitor the leaks by looking at
what you recover.
Speaker 4 (13:43):
YEP. It'll be very interesting to see how they enforce
this and how this process is going to play out,
because they are looking to have not just any reclaimers
being able to reclaim this one thirty four A, but
they have to be certified. And you know, so your
tank has to come from one of these reclaimers, or
(14:06):
at least a portion of it.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
You know, I think one of the best features on
my mala Ac machines is the printers, right, And I
always thought that it gave me what's the word I'm
looking for, not credibility, but proof. Here's what I recovered,
here's what I charged with. And I've always I've always
said to myself, when does the government get involved? And
(14:29):
you know they're going to basically be looking over my
shoulder at the printer, going, well, he took a pound out,
he put two pounds in. You know this on this car.
You know they're going to be watching and I'm guessing, well,
the machines one day dial in and we took this out,
we put this in and that's how they're going to know.
You know, you wonder if they could do that, and
I guess the technology is there that they could, right.
Speaker 4 (14:51):
Yeah, the technology is there. However, Yeah, they're right now
they're looking at more of a paper record. They haven't
looked at the connected machines, so I mean, at least
far as keeping the shop data for you know, you
guys keep track of where you're at. You know, that's
why our onboard database is kind of nice to be
(15:12):
able to go through there and you don't have to
remember to write down every service all the time. Right,
you can go back through there or you know, print
them to your you know, send them as an email
or something to have a record that way. So that
way you're not having to keep all these paper lugs necessarily.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
Well, and that's you know, that's the advantage of a
MALA machine because they have that printer built in and
they have that ability to record all that. Talk a
little bit about we were having a conversation off air
at the start about reducing oil recovery in our in
our last couple of three minutes here, Isaac, you know
what was that all about? About how a shop can
reduce oil recovery and actually make a more effective recovery
(15:50):
of refrigerant.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
Can you talk about that?
Speaker 4 (15:53):
Yeah? So, I mean, obviously, if you are just going
to build a customer, Okay, you recover some oil, you're
going to try as a customer for that oil that
you inject. But if you run a fleet or you
know you're doing you know, some of your own services,
then you want to minimize the amount of oil that
you do recover. And especially on YF machines, every time
you recover oil you need to do a manual oil injection,
(16:16):
which can be kind of a pain and take some time,
you know, just a little bit more time in the service.
So doing certain things, there's some good tips around the
vehicle set up that will help minimize the amount of
oil that you do recover.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
And you know, I think one of the tips that
we were talking about was, you know, it was interesting,
like I actually I learned something from you today, Isaac
that and I hadn't I never thought of it like this,
but to do a refrigerant recovery on number one A
cool engine, right, we gave I gave you the example.
So if a car got dropped off on Tuesday and
you brought it in Wednesday morning, service the AC in
(16:53):
the morning prior to using the AC. The car is cool,
the AC hasn't been used recently, so there's less likelihood
of well, or there's less oil in suspension in the refrigerant, right,
and then.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
The most correct and then the machine won't.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
Recover as much. And then you talked a little bit
about the location of the low pressure and the high
pressure service ports in our last two minutes.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
What was that about.
Speaker 4 (17:19):
Yeah, So, I mean you can take a look at
the vehicle's AC layout and if you see something like
the LP port being relatively close to the compressor itself,
then that there is a high likelihood that during that
initial in rush of refrigement when you do a recovery,
it could pull some of that oil along with that.
(17:42):
So if you especially I've got a fleet service where
this is a known thing, you know, it's very quick
to determine how much oil you're pulling in, and if
it's a high amount, you know you can hook up
the HP only port and just redo a recovery on
the high side. That way, that would reduce the chances
(18:02):
of doing some pulling in some of that oil.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
You know, there's there's there's always a way with you
guys at Mala. You guys are always thinking, so I
appreciate that, Isaac. I really do listen. I you know,
our clock's running out. It's going to grab us. If
the listeners want more information, where's the website? Where do
they go?
Speaker 4 (18:19):
A service solution? Dot Mala m A h l E
dot com.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
Okay, cool beans, And I want to get you back.
There's other things I want to talk to you about.
And uh, I know you're busy. You're so hard to
get a hold of them. We appreciate your valuable time
being here with us today, Isaac. Is always was a pleasure, sir.
And you know we we expect create things from you
guys as you lead us into the future regarding AC machines,
as you have continued to do so and be the
pioneers that you are. Thanks Isaac, I appreciate your time today.
Speaker 4 (18:47):
All right, thank you, Ron, You're very welcome.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
I'm running any and the car doctor. I'll return right
after this.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
Don't go away.
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