Extending Car Air Conditioners, Adding Lube to Antifreeze and Altering Catalytic Converters

By Jon Gail Blair
Published on June 1, 1996
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The single most important thing about all air conditioners is to use them every day.
The single most important thing about all air conditioners is to use them every day.
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MOTHER's Mechanic columnist Jon Gail Blair.
MOTHER's Mechanic columnist Jon Gail Blair.

MOTHER’s Mechanic Jon shares his thirty-five years of car repair tips and know-how. Learn about extending car air conditioners and adding lube to antifreeze, tight lug nuts and altering catalytic converters.

Extending Car Air Conditioners, Adding Lube to Antifreeze and Altering Catalytic Converters

Let me get something off my chest before we get down to business. I’m not a “journalist.” I’m a “wrench turner,” and have been for the better part of 35 years. What gets me up in the morning after all that time, what has kept me clinking away in this field since Kennedy was president, is simply that the same things that mystify you about your cars mystify me. They are at once impossibly complex and mule-like simple, increasingly dependable, yet technologically incomprehensible to a seasoned NASA flight engineer. They’re a source of our greatest joy, and most teeth-clenching rage. But we love them and need to care just as much for those solid blocks of whirring computer relays as we did for the simple straight sixes of a generation ago. So what can the novice owner do, beyond changing the oil and airing the tires, to extend the life of a car ? Volumes, my friends, volumes!

I was recently told that after only three years, the air-conditioning unit needed to be basically replaced on my 1993 Ford F-100. The mechanic told me the internal seals were gone. Is he full of baloney or do I need an overhauled A/C?

Dale Hartsman
Kansas City, MO

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