There is a major shortage of R134a going on right now. For those who have been looking around, or not, the price has gone up three to six times as much as it was last year. Hope you don't need toppin' off this year. . . 'cause looks like there's not enough to go around for everyone.

I noticed what I had paid 3.48 a can for what is now 7.48 at wally's world.

Holy cow, it has gone up!!! I topped mine off last summer, tested it last week and it still worked well, I hope it lasts the summer now!

Wholesalers are frozen. Some are completely out of stock. All seem to have sale restrictions (not more than 3 cans, etc), and absolutely no bulk sale at all.

you can always run propane. It might be volaile but as long as the system hold vac you'll hold the gas.

Propane?? Holy http://www.dieselplace.com/forum/images/smilies/censored.gif QM lets avoid the rolling bomb action eh? Please say you were kidding! Propane and butane both will work but are INCREDIBLY bad ideas. There was a shop here that was using butane without the owners knowledge and several people got killed or worse yet, burned horribly!

I have used this in about 10 vehicles over the last 5 years or so because you can't buy R134A in Wisconsin: http://www.es-refrigerants.com/
It runs at a lower pressure and cools better than R134a too.

I bet if you check the es-refrigerants are based on propane and butane. It is not uncommon. 12 ounces of propane is a lot less volitile than say 20 gallons of gasoline. The CFC industry does not want any substitutes so it can drive the prices through the roof. I have run propane/butane for years and it works better than any CFC. Propane and butane do not effect the ozone or do not cause global warming.

hrjack,

Good luck with that! I personally have seen people horribly burned because of disreputable (hows that for PC http://www.dieselplace.com/forum/images/smilies/smile.gif) shops putting propane into AC units. You are correct though, I checked the es-refrigerant site and their stuff is classified as flammable.

My text books have propane, butane, and isobute (R290, R600, R600a) all in the not-commonly used category. R600a is an ingredent in R406A, a refrigerant that was supposed to be used in automotive applications. Someone saw that R600a in there, and didn't like it, because of the flamablity concerns. However, it was classified a non-flamable refrigerant.

Everything has it's draw backs. LP, from the reading I've just started, looks really good. I'd like to experiment with it in other applications myself. Ammonia is used in large commerical refrigeration systems, and is toxic in heavy concentrations. People use torches, and burn themselves. People drink coffee and sue McDonalds. The list goes on and on.

They've already got their knickers in a knot over in Europe wanting to out law all the new refrigerants the whole world has just gone to. They want to convert over to CO2 instead. Something to do about releasing all these sythetic gases into the atomsphere. Gee, lets get right down to it, skip everything and release the biggest greenhouse gas right out there.

Can't please everyone.