Driving a car in the UK can be an expensive thing. Between the cost of the car itself and its various running costs, monthly vehicle expenditure can ramp up significantly – causing cashflow issues for even the most financially settled of households. But for many, driving is a necessity. Whether making a difficult commute to a job or making regular trips to check on family, owning and using a car can be quite simply non-negotiable.
In hard times like these, it is necessary to make savings wherever possible. There are routes to saving money on your car through renegotiating finance terms and finding new insurance plans, but one of the better ways is to undertake your maintenance. We’re going to explore that here, through the lens of a non-essential maintenance task that could save you a significant amount of money in servicing fees: air con regassing.
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Car Maintenance and Saving Money
Car maintenance is an essential part of car ownership, being the ultimate route by which issues are diagnosed and fixed. Keeping a car well-maintained is naturally a legal consideration as well as a monetary one; MOTs are designed to catch risks to other road users and ensure all vehicles in active use are at a minimum standard of safety.
When you come to book your MOT online, then, it is far better that your car is in good condition than not. Otherwise, your MOT costs are at minimum doubled, due to retaking a failed MOT – to say nothing of the cost of any necessary fixes. With this in mind, a year-round approach to maintenance and repair is a good cost-saving measure.
Troubleshooting Issues
Of course, car maintenance is usually a task best left to professionals. When it comes to engine or suspension issues, this is the case – but there are many ways you can diagnose and fix issues yourself, without incurring a significant service charge. Here, we’ll use the less-essential task of air con regassing to examine this.
First, you’ll need to troubleshoot your issue. For air-con, you might notice a downturn in cooling impact when you turn it on or diminished airflow. Rather than jumping straight into replacing refrigerant, you should first investigate the possibility of a leak or failed compressor. UV light is a great way to identify leaking refrigerant.
DIY Regassing
Regassing your air con involves re-injecting refrigerant into your AC system. There are three essential components – the condenser, the compressor and the evaporator. Refrigerant should only be introduced with a dedicated refrigerant kit, via the low-pressure side of your system – that is, the fill port on the evaporator side.
It is called regassing because the refrigerant needs to be held at pressure – typically around 30 psi before the compressor. This is why a regassing kit is recommended. A pressure valve can then be used to measure the pressure of the system as you fill it.
