A/C PRO ACP-100 Professional Formula R-134a
Pros
- Will Recharge Your Car And Get it Blowing Cold Air!
- Product Comes With A Temperature & Pressure Gauge
- All In One Charge Kit That Includes Refrigerant, Oil, & Other Additives
- Built in Leak Sealer Mixed in With The Refrigerant
- Twenty-Four Inch Hose
Cons
- May Not Solve Your AC Problem If You Have A Large Leak or Faulty Compressor
- Some Can Show Up Empty of Refrigerant
- Customer Service Was Lacking
- Complaints That Copuler Did Not Fit All Vehicles (This May Be A User Error)
Good evening ladies and gentlemen! Today on RefrigerantHQ we will be doing another Product Review. Today’s product of choice is the A/C PRO’s ACP-100 R-134a recharge kit. Now these types of products I am sure most of you have dealt with in the past. They can be a lifesaver in a pinch and give you a nice cold breeze in the dead of summer. But, how does the ACP-100 compare against the other products out there? What makes it stand out? Is it worth buying or should you move to a different product. Let’s find out!
Before I get into what a product does and doesn’t offer I always like to spend a little bit of time looking at the company behind the product. I feel that a look, even if it’s a brief one, helps the consumer and myself understand what goes into the product. In this case the ACP-100 AC Pro is from the company called ACProCold.com. This company is then owned by IDQ Incorporated out of Garland, Texas. The IDQ company has been in business for over forty years and through out all of those years they have been dedicated to providing do-it-yourself air conditioning products for the weekend warrior mechanic as well as the seasoned service technician. In fact I would feel comfortable saying that they have a VERY large market share when it comes to DIY air conditioning recharge kits. These guys know what they are doing.
Know Before You Buy
A lot of you may already know this but I would be amiss if I didn’t mention it. Before we get onto the Pros and Cons I want to point out that these AC recharge kits are not a miracle worker. Heck, most of the time they aren’t even a fix. What these recharge kits do is take a problem that you have with your car’s air conditioning system and push the problem on down the road.
Your AC system rather it be on a car, house, or freezer all work relatively the same way. The refrigerant goes through an endless cycle moving back and forth between gas and liquid and liquid to gas. The system is completely sealed and no refrigerant should be coming out of it. So, in a perfect world you should never run out of refrigerant. But, as we all know the world isn’t perfect and things break, hoses crack, o-rings crumble, and so on and so on. When this happens your refrigerant begins to leak out. The more refrigerant that leaks out the less potent your air conditioner will be in the dead of summer.
Now what these recharge kits do is pump your system full of refrigerant again. So, you have a leak where your refrigerant escaped out of and if you use a recharge kit you are just dumping more refrigerant into your system. Depending on your leak this could be a good thing or a bad thing. If you have a tiny crack in one of your A/C hoses that barely leaks then an AC recharge kit will be perfect for you. You could recharge it in March and have it last the whole season because the leak is so small. But, if you have a very large leak, or worse, a major part failure then these recharge kits will not work for you. You could recharge your car today, have it blow cold air, and then come back a few days later and all of your refrigerant is gone again. Not a good deal.
So, the point I’m trying to make here is just know that these recharge kits aren’t a miracle worker. Yes, they’ll work in some cases, but not all. Alright, on to the review!
Pros
Sure you can get some R-134a for a few dollars but what is it that you are truly getting? The A/C Pro ACP-100 is much different then just buying a can of R-134a off the shelf and dumping it into your car’s system. The ACP-100 comes with a variety of features and bonuses that a regular old can 134a just doesn’t offer. As an example, if you were to charge your car with straight R-134a you would need to add in PAG oil as well. THE ACP-100 recharge kit comes with the oil already mixed in with the refrigerant. That’s one less thing you have to do.
Along with the oil you also get other additives that help extend the life of the components in your system including a leak sealer that could actually seal up small leaks in your hose lines or around orings. If you notice that on the instructions of this product it says to shake before use and to also rotate the can as you are charging the system. The main reason they call for this is to ensure that all of the additives, oil, and refrigerant are mixed together properly.
If you get one thing from this review it’s this the A/C Pro ACP-100 is all about making things easy. It’s the easy button so they say. Everything that would need to be done to add refrigerant to your system is in that one little can. On top of that the product comes with a twenty-four inch hose and with a pressure gauge so you can see exactly how much refrigerant you have when you start, when charging, and when you finish. The coupler at the end of the hose attaches right to the low side port just by pushing it on. Don’t worry though if you have the wrong port as this coupler will ONLY fit the low side port and nowhere else. This prevents very costly mistakes by using the wrong port.
The last Pro that I am going to mention here is that the R-134a that comes with this product is compatible with all other types of R-134a. What that means is that you do not have to worry about mixing refrigerants together. Say, for example, you have a pound of refrigerant left in your car and you need to recharge it. You do NOT have to purge all of the old refrigerant before recharging. Like I said before, easy button.
Cons
Alright folks, onto the cons. The biggest con is something that I’ve already mentioned. Any recharge kit, I don’t care what brand, are temporary fixes and that is if they work. If you have a massive leak or a faulty compressor then these recharge kits aren’t going to do you any good. I still like to buy them though as a kind of pre-cursor before taking my car into the shop. If the recharge kit doesn’t work no big deal. You are out thirty dollars and you take your car to the shop. However, if the recharge kit does work then you just saved yourself a whole mess of money by not taking your car to the mechanic.
Besides that point there are a few other cons that I found when researching this product. All of these complaints or cons relate back to shipping and how the product arrived to the customer. I will say that these complaints are an exception and when looking at other reviews the shipping errors are a small percentage. Some consumers experienced their cans showing up completely empty and void of refrigerant. This happened because the can was damaged during shipping and all of the refrigerant leaked out. Other users reported that the gauge on the recharge kit did not work properly or was broken upon arrival. Again, this relates back to shipping and how the product arrived. I will mention here that when customers tried to contact A/C Pro for advice or help on their damaged product that their customer service was not the most helpful.
The last con that I will bring up before moving on is that some users stated that the coupler that comes with the A/C recharge kit did not fit their car. I saw quite a few complaints like this, but here’s the thing. The coupler is designed to only fit on the low side port of your AC system. I have a feeling that these users were trying to attach it to the high side port which explains why it wasn’t fitting correctly. So, this was a user error rather than a product error.
Conclusion
The A/C Pro ACP-100 R-134a recharge kit is a great investment if you find yourself with a car blowing hot air. This holds especially true if you think that you are going to have to go to a mechanic. I highly suggest you try this product first before committing any expenses to a shop repair. The thing to remember is that these recharge kits are a patch. They are a band-aid. They do not fix the real problem of why your system is leaking refrigerant but they do offer a great and cheap solution to get your car blowing cold air again. I would highly recommend buying this product if your car’s AC is no longer blowing cold. The worst that could happen is that you find out you have a part failure or a large leak and your car starts blowing hot again in a few days. The BEST that could happen is that this recharge kit could charge your car for the entire summer season and you avoid all of the expense of going through a shop diagnosis and repair.
If you are interested in purchasing this product please click here to be taken to our Amazon.com partner. Or, you can also find this product in most retailers and auto parts stores. Also, if you are unsure on how to use this product then I highly recommend our ‘How To’ guide on AC recharge kits.