Expansion valve - how to replace

Not common as a DIY repair so there may not be many DIY info sources.

But there is the OG factory repair manual- probably well worth the rent for a job like that.

 

See this post.

 

How long did you run your vacuum pump to evacuate the system before charging? What vacuum reading did you achieve? Do the radiator fans operate when the A/C turns on?

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.

 

Sounds to me like icing happening and clogging the system if it was ever able to run or you've got a kinked hose or something or some garbage literally in some passageway. Relegate this car to not summer duty they're so plentiful now You can get another one for near nothing with the air conditioner working at least in my area. You're taking the whole dash out of the car and taking the whole air conditioning evaporator heat box out of the car and their resides your expansion valve just like all the other older Toyotas with expansion valves they're in the evap box My experience is they rarely go bad unless they get trashed up from an explosion I had a 74 Corolla with a hang on air conditioning unit in 78 and 93 it was still running fine The air conditioning the car wasn't in such good shape but the air would blow snowflakes out the vent underneath the glove box It was a Denso hang on units with a Tecumseh type upright pump the old piston type. In any of my older Corollas all the way up through 97 never replaced the expansion valve in any of them and had very cold air and all of my cars because we live in the southeast USA and no air is not an option generally speaking. I've replaced some damaged evaporators leaking etc and much older cars than the Prius mostly Toyotas but not expansion valves matter of fact that unscrew the old expansion valve and screw it right to the new or add the evaporator right to the existing expansion valve no problem and they're not very expensive the expansion valves that is. That's just personal experience 47 years driving predominantly Toyota vehicles since the KE series Corolla.

 

Well if you've replaced all those parts from one car to the other then you won't have any problems or qualms about pulling the dash again to replace the AC evaporator r and all that in the box that you want to replace I would certainly want to pressure test that evaporator. Before I did all that work putting in a new expansion valve and so on and so forth maybe check the heater core too while all of that is apart so that you will in fact make sure you go 500,000 mi pretty easily which the car will do with no problem with or without the air conditioning issue I've got four of them here and none of them have had the air conditioning issue as of yet and we're at 300,000 miles in most everything One is $190. And I'm in the southeast USA where air conditioning is not going to be not working. Another reason I guess why I have a few of the cars because I've heard the horror stories of the air conditioning so I've got three I can go through plus one more I have not been able to kill the air yet and I've done all the wrong things that everybody says you can't do more or less but I've done that to all of my Toyotas over 46 years and have never had any problems. When I was young and really ignorant and having a really good time I drove a Toyota 2tc 1600 hemi engine TE57 drove it 200,000 mi and never changed the oil never added yes changed no and it was running when I gave it to a friend of mine yeah I know.