A month or two ago, my wife and I are driving the LC to go on a hike. The air temps here in Southern California were still cool but the strong sun could heat up the LC’s cabin quickly enough to make my wife and I want to turn on the AC. After a few moments of fiddling with our 2005’s integrated stereo and climate control system, we had the AC on with the fan gently blowing, waiting to be cooled down. It didn’t take us long to realize that not much was happening. The AC wasn’t blowing cold.

The last time this happened, I took my LC to a locally owned auto shop to have the AC recharged. This was a couple years ago. In the meantime, I’d seen AC recharging kits at the local auto parts stores, so I search YouTube for some information. i was quickly convined that recharging my LC’s AC myself would be worth a try.

I headed over to the local Napa auto parts store where an employee advised me on which kit to get. “Get one of those cans and buy the hose. The other has [someting] in the gas that’ll make any shop refuse to work on your AC system if they find out.” Was he upselling me? I didn’t want to invest the time or effort to do the research. (Though maybe I will, now.)

I bought what the Napa guy recommended. (The items are pictured below along with the connection point to my rig’s AC system.) I did what the YouTube guy said I should. And I’ll never ask my local auto shop to recharge my AC ever again.

The two items I bought at Napa, connected

The connector for the AC system recharge