Tale of the mysterious Schrader valve

[Carlos]

Air conditioning went flat on my '93 S-10. Took it to my very good racing buddy friend at his garage and he checked it out. Said he could solve it for $300. R-12 of course and since noone I knew was headed for Mexico figgured I'd do the 134 switch. Low side valve leak. Hmmm. Asked about that and told it was the Schrader valve and I need to replace it. Never heard of one of those. Guessed it was one of those Chevy only parts that costs a bunch. Asked my cousin Bob. The guy was running Bonneville and El Mirage dry lakes in the late '40s then again when he got back from Korea. Ran the same myself '89 to '01. Mechanically very smart guy that never made more than $12 an hour in his life. You've met 'em. He said, "yep" you're gonna have to get a new Schrader valve.


Tried the conversion hoping they were wrong. Two big oil laden cans pumped it up. Viola, it works! Next morning it was flat. The mysterious Schrader valve must indeed be bad.

Eventually learned that a Schrader valve is what we've been calling valve cores since we were kids with bikes. 50 years for me. What disappoints is those two "friiends". Could'a been simple.

BTW, the parts store valve stems had too short a sticky out thingy for the recharge coupler to engage successifully. But, Beeman makes a crow pellet that when the tail is cut off slips over the chargers pin giving the extra 3/32. Works. Cool now. Rant off.

 

[Hamilton Felix]

Sounds like you just had a language problem. I've long known that tire valves are Schrader valves, and have valve cores that go bad. But then, I was busting tires when I worked at a station in 1973 (yeah, I know how to change split rim log truck tires, too -- it's WORK). In a mechanical or tire trade environment, I'd expect everyone to know what a Schrader valve is; I sometimes say "Shcrader valve," and sometimes just "tire valve" or "valve stem." It's only strange to the rest of the world. The valve on a typical air conditioning system doesn't look exactly like a tire valve stem, but it's obviously a Schrader valve.

BTW, if you are around large equipment or a few really small machines, you'll see there are a couple of other sizes in addition to the Schrader valve we're used to seeing every day.

Sure hope your A/C gets fixed for the long term. This R12 ban is crap, since we're the only ones banning it. I'm wondering how hard it will be to change my '67 Thunderbird to R134, when we get it back from the restoration shop.

 

[WFK]

I have this language problem too, with CONDENSORS.
They are capacitors that condense nothing.