95 Civic expansion valve location and replacement?

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bubba - 01 Jul 2004 01:55 GMT

I need to clean/replace the expansion vavle in my 1995 1.5l Civic.
The compressor totally trashed itself.

It appears to be in the passenger compartment.

Has anyone done this and what is the best way to get at it?

Thanks

Dave
Sweating in Dallas

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Caroline - 01 Jul 2004 02:48 GMT

It appears to be inside the evaporator casing.

www.autozone.com has free step-by-step instructions for the expansion valve's
replacement. Follow the "repair guides" pointers. Go to "chassis electrical" and
then "expansion valve."

Hope you have some experience with reefer systems. For one, you're going to have
to discharge the refrigerant and then re-charge...
http://www.honda.co.uk/owner/CivicManual/index.html might be helpful on this
count.

I've never done this; just have a bit of experience with reefer systems.

> I need to clean/replace the expansion vavle in my 1995 1.5l Civic.
> The compressor totally trashed itself.
>
> It appears to be in the passenger compartment.
>
> Has anyone done this and what is the best way to get at it?

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George Macdonald - 01 Jul 2004 21:01 GMT

>I need to clean/replace the expansion vavle in my 1995 1.5l Civic.
>The compressor totally trashed itself.
>
>It appears to be in the passenger compartment.
>
>Has anyone done this and what is the best way to get at it?

How much experience do you have with auto maintenance in general. It's
doable but not by a novice with limited tools. The valve is bolted to the
evaporator inlet, inside the evaporator casing, so you need to open up the
A/C system to get at it and dismounting the evaporator/casing is no joy
ride. There may be shortcuts but manuals usually specify partial
dismantling of the dashboard.

I don't think the expansion valve is cleanable - assuming it's you problem,
just replace it. Of course reassembly/recharge will involve evacuation of
the regrigerant system to a deep vacuum.

Rgds, George Macdonald

"Just because they're paranoid doesn't mean you're not psychotic" - Who, me??

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bubba - 02 Jul 2004 02:56 GMT

>>I need to clean/replace the expansion vavle in my 1995 1.5l Civic.
>>The compressor totally trashed itself.
[quoted text clipped - 17 lines]
>
> "Just because they're paranoid doesn't mean you're not psychotic" - Who, me??

Thanks for the input from both you and Caroline!!

The experience isn't much of an issue, I ask questions to figure the
best way to get at things in cars that I haven't worked on before.
And hopefully someone may point out that "short cut" :-).

I've got the pump and gages.

The compressor case blew out the side, so I'd suspect there was some
sort of blockage in the system to allow the head pressure to get high
enough to do that.

I flushed out the condenser today and found lots of bits and pieces on
the compressor side, but just a few small pieces on the evap side.

I'm going to flush out the rest of the lines this weekend and see what I
get.
If I get much at all between the evaporator and the condensor, it looks
like I'll be pulling the evap. YUCK.

Thanks again for the help!

Cheers

Dave

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Chip Stein - 02 Jul 2004 23:31 GMT

> The compressor case blew out the side, so I'd suspect there was some
> sort of blockage in the system to allow the head pressure to get high
[quoted text clipped - 7 lines]
> If I get much at all between the evaporator and the condensor, it looks
> like I'll be pulling the evap. YUCK.

you can never reliably flush a condenser, being cross flow the
flush takes the path of least resistance. there will always be
something in there, this will cause problems down the road.
once the system is empty it takes about 10 minutes to pull a civic
evap case.
Chip

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