It might have been clarified already, but.
These expys have an AC expansion valve, no orifice tube.
The dryer that holds the dessicant is part of the condenser, i dont know if its serviceable.
I hope you dont have the "black death" as some call it. The compressor brakes down and you get a black sludge that gets pumped throughout the system. We went through 4 ac compressors in 2 years on a suburban that had that. Flushed a dozen times. We sold it before we truely got it fixed. Reading up in it, material and buildup can get clogged in the condenser and evaporaters tiny passages and randomly dislodge. Replacement of those 2 items is generally recommended to resolve the failures.
That Suburban probably had crap in the condenser and pieces of piston rings that kept dislodging and going through the system.
It was brought up that someone said they thought this generation which I think is the third generation that were talking about has an expansion valve and an orifice tube but it makes little difference overall. Both parts serve the same function but sometimes and expansion valve can give a little bit better system performance and they also tend to not clog up as easy and cause a high side restriction like orifice tubes can.
There are some Autos that put a liquid dryer in one of the lines coming from the condenser to compressor and sometimes they call it a muffler also sometimes it's a combination item so they could certainly put a dryer in the inlet or Outlet of the condenser but most automotive AC systems have but people referred as an AV bottle, accumulator or accumulator drier which usually has a desiccant bag inside. This is the larger silver or black canister that usually sits vertically up near the firewall.
Like I have mentioned, it's not really rocket science and I was speaking in generalizations to various vehicles and specifically some Fords like the panther chassis, 1st and 2nd generation Expeditions and F-series trucks.
As others have mentioned sometimes I can pressure doesn't fail internally and there is no debris in the system at all but when you have a compressor failure you never really know how much damage it's going to do in the future. You can flush and flush and sometimes a chunk will come out later.
I'm not a real fan of most the commercial flushes out there as they are thick oily liquids and I really don't think they work that well. Then you have the option of blowing them out with compressed air but that puts a lot of moisture in the system.
I have flushed a few condensers with denatured alcohol with a drill pump. You want to start by flushing them the opposite direction of the flow to try to remove anything that's in there and not push it further inward. And if you can flush them through for 15 or 20 minutes you stand a good chance of getting everything out. Then I hit them with 120 PSI of air even both directions. Then sometimes I flush them again. Then blow them out and let them dry.
If you have a compressor failure it's best to just replace the accumulator bottle, expansion valve or orifice tube, and condenser. When you have everything apart I like to blow through the lines the opposite of the flow and try to catch any that comes out on a rag.
Then of course you have to have the proper type of oil which for years on Ford's has been pag 46 and the proper amount in the compressor and add extra for what you have removed by flushing and blowing things out.
The term Black Death was typically used to refer to conversions that went bad.
The most common way to get the black sick problem is from having any type of PAG oil in a system with any trace of a chlorofluorocarbon or maybe it's just fluorocarbon refrigerant.
If you pop one little bit of r12 or even what's in the oil and coating the inside of the system on a system that originally had r12 and then you put pag in there it will break down the pag oil into a black slime.
This is why on all retrofit systems you use an ester oil.
Any system that originally came with 134a should not have any problems with black death unless someone somehow put the wrong refrigerant in or had contaminated equipment when installing refrigerant.
But remember, basically, an AC system it's just one big circular pump. The compressor is the pump and the refrigerant does the magic.
It changes state twice in a cycle I guess you could say and even though it's not really cooling, it's really giving heat, it sure feels like it's creating cold to us.
It's very similar to a spray bottle just spraying a fine mist of liquid into the evaporator but because of the magic of refrigerants it makes that evaporator almost ice cold. Then the vapor comes back out and gets pumped through the condenser. The condenser by definition allows it to condense back into a liquid and the cycle continues.
As long as the pump, compressor, is somewhat efficient and can maintain the pressure is necessary, and the flow is maintained without any significant restrictions , and airflow is maintained over the condenser so the condensing can occur... The system will cool.
One big pump with the magic of refrigerants!
It's interesting to read up about refrigerants like ammonia and butane or butane propane Blends. They work quite well as refrigerants and have actually been popular in some forms of refrigeration.
Most all of those Internet only drop-in replacements that came out shortly after 1994 and are still quite readily available are some version of these flammable blends.
That opens up a whole new argument a flammability Etc but in reality there have been very few problems from them.
Cars don't really catch on fire that often but when they do it's almost always a fuel leak or an electrical problem and when problems occur, you have a lot more to worry about than 28 to 32 oz of refrigerant whether it is flammable or not.
I have used them a couple of times to give increase performance on vehicles in the early years of R134a were many of the systems were barely adequate. I almost always got an 8 to 10 degree reduction in vent temperatures versus the same conditions with the original 134a.
