J.R.

Its where my Octavias have been perfect for me, a double camping airbed fitted in perfectly. I view this thread and the excellent simple sleeping platform as being for occasional kipping in the car use rather than turning your Yeti into a camper, to sleep overnight say breaking a journey does not need all the accoutrements that need to be found space for in the other conversions yet remain accessible. I am hoping that for slightly longer stays a Decathlon base tent will give the latter. I am not impressed with most of the Youtube videos showing slide out this that and the others, too reminiscent of the fake George Clarke TV programs, they look good on a screen but are not practical.

Time, heat and the system working at its maximum, you will never get all the contents out, once the pressure is equalised between the low side (when pumping) and the cylinder no more regrigerant will flow, its why when using little cans each successive one gives less of its contents than the previous.

I would connect it again and let all the remaining contents that can go into the system, it doesnt sound like you will overcharge it by doing so, perhaps check the standby pressure (after it all cools down) first. It can take a very very long time to get the final contents out of a cylinder.

I like that one because it has a very simple & basic sleeping platform that will not take up any space stored in the garage, all the other plans my own included are overengineered for occasional use. Its been on my "to do" list for ages, I picked up the mattress material some while back, I am going to make the simple version first and see how sleeping in the car works out before making something more suited to touring with storage included.

Keep your eyes on the road where the real hazards exist especially the myriad other people staring into their phones while driving. You could try placing the mirror at the rear of the car facing down & in the field of view of your rear view mirror, that way when you glance to see the traffic behind you would see the dog at the same time.

Somehow I missed this posting. You have misunderstood how the guage should be used, the green range which is wide to cover all temperatures corresponds with the 20-30/25-35 psi I stated for the low side pressure when the system is pumping and cooling, until you got to the minimum pressure for the system to command the pump modulating valve (I am guessing at 40 psi) you should have ignored the reading, when it dropped, the point at which you chickened out you should have carried on filling until it got to the middle of the green zone whilst feeling for cold air from the vents. A couple of hours after switching off when everything is back at ambient temperature you check the pressure again and it should be around the 70psi that I quoted, check the temperature against a chart for R134a and top up again as required. You should also purge the line before connecting or each time you charge you will be introducing air into the system. Check the labelling carefully, in small print I guarantee that you will find that its not R134a as its illegal to sell to individuals in Europe and is now rigidly enforced, most use deceptive advertising with R134a in large lettering and eco alternative in tiny letters, I expect you have propane gas.

The top up bottle will work but not with 3 squirts, it had already started working when you saw the low side pressure drop and mistakenly stopped the refilling. Warm the canister before use like you would (should) with an aérosol paint can.

Have you weighed the can? If it truly contains 500g of refrigerant then even after your 3 squirts it should still weigh a lot more than 500g. I bet you that it doesn't, none of the Chinese ones that I bought did, I got screwed exactly the same way with a box of 400ml aerosol spray paints that contained half of the paint that a normal 150ml one would and which did not even have enough propellant to spray what was in there. I recently bought a box of 1litre tins of grey underbody Schutz in France, I have been using this stuff for 45 years and its the first time that they have contained 60cl instead of 1 litre I had to laugh at your "3 squirts" description, even with my pro 13kg cylinder it can take several minutes (much much longer when less than 20°c) to refill a system, it only really starts flowing when the pump cuts in and the low side pressure reduces allowing flow, the cylinder gas off pressure (not the correct term) is the same as the standby pressure in a charged system which when you think about it is obvious, no way would "3 squirts" when the system is not even pumping put anything at all into a partially charged system. When I charge a system (not a top up) it is first vacuumed down.

Having thought about it and after consulting my tables you should keep on filling with the aircon on full cold setting & blower fan on maximum until your guage reads 20-30 psi, when the engine is switched off the pressure would then rise to 70-80 psi if your outside temp is the same as here, look on t'internet for a graph or table. what you have experienced is normal for when the pump starts working at the minimum gas pressure threshold, its normal for it to drop, keep on filling till it reaches 20-30 psi or 25-35 psi if ambient temp is above 30°c, you will likely need several cans.

You cannot rely on that guage, the low side pressure is directly proportional to the ambient temperature, if you are filling while the aircon pump is running (as you should) the low side pressure reading will be low. Think of the system as having a low and high side (which it does) at rest the pressure is equal in both circuits and your guage reading should be compared to a temperature/pressure chart, when the system pumps the pressure in the high side goes up and of course the low side, the suction side of the pump will go down. Pressure readings are very crude and need to be done with a manifold set reading both high and low circuits, the correct way to charge the system is by weight, I dont have refrigerant recovery equipment so have to rely on my guages but its very crude, in any case to judge when to stop filling its the high side pressure and to a lesser degree its relation to the low side that I will be looking at. Today at 22°c I would be looking for 70-80 psi low side pressure with the system not having been running for at least an hour to enable the pump internals and the system to equalise to the ambient temperature. The above pressures/temperature is for R134a, you are most likely trying to top it up with flammable iso-propane gas which will have a different temp/pressure graph, there is no way that you can guesstimate what the static pressure should be with your potentially explosive mix of gases. As has been said one can is unlikely to fill your system anyway, they tell lies with the content weight often including the weight of the can, and in any case the nearer your system gets to the correct pressure the less you get out of each can, the final one unlikely to give more than 50% of its contents. Frankly you would be better off without a guage as I was when like you I learned the hard way about these top up cans, I just kept filling and changing the cans until I heard the fans cut in & felt the system start to cool, that is only the minimum charge for the system to barely work, you need to add a lot more than that but have no way of knwoing when to stop.

The premium will go up by £25 for each cup of coffee, no good deed goes unpunished

There have been several points put forward as to why that is no longer the case with the modern WTLP (or whatever the term is) emissions standards, the change of refrigerant etc. I believe that for EU countries a car aircon system should be able to chill the incoming air by 10°c, any more being a bonus, using the recirc function will speed things up. A house AC system needs even less cooling as in general they are well insulated and dont become sweatboxes like cars in sunny weather unless you have one of the Grand Design type greenhouses that they claim are super insulated. Going into an enclosed area and having the temp drop 10°c for a car or 5°c for a house is very refreshing. Clearly the AC systems for tropical countries need a lot more oomph. My Octavia 2 would chill 20°c air to 4°c, it would get to zero at lower ambient temperatures when I tested it but it would be the heater being used on those days, the Yeti system has exactly the same pump but brought it down to 7 or 8°c when I tested a couple of weeks ago although the outside temp may have been a little higher, the system had a full refrigerant charge verified by VCDS and my test manifold set. Those were evaporator readings from VCDS, the vent duct temps would be higher.

This thread was started by someone in the UK that wants to use his car AC when the outside temperature is 20°c and is unhappy that it will not bring it down to 4°C. Their house must be like a deep freeze!

How much weight have you lost? Probably about the same as I have gained in that time, let me know when I can return it I returned to the running club last week, first time since October 2020, have gone from one of the front runners to the last by a country mile , the hardest part (the return) is over, things can only get better from now on.

Seconded regarding the laptop running out of battery, I have an invertor that I made decades ago hidden amongst my stuff in the UK, I never thought that I would get to use it again. Looking at my laptop charger its 18.5 volt 3.5 amp, do the Chinese make any cheap car lighter socket invertor chargers?

My rust preventative or rust stopper of choice now is Owatrol having tried it following the recommendations on here.

It should only power the fridge when the car engine is running the car battery fully charged and the engine revs high enough to maintain the charge in the vehicle against the current drain of lights, screen heaters etc and charge the caravan battery, power the fridge etc. The voltage threshold is say 13.3 volts, thats an educated guess based on battery voltage vs charge level. I would buy a little plug in voltmeter for the cigarrette lighter socket to compare readings with what you are measuring at the caravan or towing socket. Could your vehicle perhaps be one with Stop/start and the battery management bull***t system for charging on the over-run & while braking etc? They keep the battery undercharged which could play havoc with a caravan towing set up especially if the battery is a little tired.

No, I was being serious, had they failed or lost significant force then they would not have been fit for the purpose.

I have a GPS runners watch, I realise that it takes plots periodically and effectively "fills in the gaps" based on my known speed and stride rate from the accelerometer, when I look at the map on the app and zoom right in I am amaazed that I can even see when I run one side of a footpath or road in one direction and the other on the return, I can see where I stop for a pee but at halts like that it cant really guess and it shows me meandering around where I did not go. I also used it a few times to monitor my changeovers of the appartments, the cleaning, laundry etc as I can easily rack up 10k paces on a day like that across the 3 floors without ever leaving the building. Clearly it loses it loses sattelite contact a lot while I am inside and the map when enlarged is a massive scribble showing me meandering in a radius of 25m all around my property whereas I was always within it.

Find another garage or DIY as the rear shocks have to be one of the easiest jobs in the world, only beaten in the easiness stakes by rear spring replacement and rear disc backplate replacement. If, that is you cut a slot in the old one to remove it as shown in the photos above and make one single cut to fit the new ones, done properly it will be invisible and not lose any rigidity. Otherwise removing the hub is a pain in the backside.

Very little if replacement cams dont turn out to be needed, my concern would be valve, guide & seat damage as there may well have been piston/valve contact. I would want to remove the cams & do a cylinder leakdown test before continuing.

thanks from me too!

5 bar at what temperature? Are the fans cutting in now and remaining running? VCDS will show you what the compressor cut off codes are, sounds like its cycling because the high side is going too high, normally that would be fans not operating.

Well done that man, I reckon you might be the prize winner. The OP can try the same experiment with a full electric load, lights, heated screens, blower, wipers etc, also with the aux drive belt removed to see if the noise gets worse or goes away.

I would say it was a DMF problem but the noise is coming from the wrong end of the car, perhaps an exhaust mounting or part of the exhaust in close proximity to something it should be isolated from? The exhaust is the only thing at that end of the car which would react in the same way under load at <1500 rpm whatever the gear selected.