Originally Posted by Macster33
I might want to add that upon closing the valve with the loop attached the metal wire did infact seem to move out of the black tube its in and then when the valve was opened the wire went back into the black tube.
It's supposed to do that, that's normal. What it sounds like to me is your a/c is not engaging. Sometimes people get fooled into thinking their a/c is working, but all you get is air out the vent.
Is your a/c in fact engaging (do you feel, hear, see the clutch engage)? If it is, and your getting still somewhat warm air, you might have something else that is a problem. With my current Honda, I leaked checked the system and no leaks where detected, but it was a bit undercharged, so I simply evacuated, vaccumed for 30 minutes, and recharged with a bit more refrigerant to get into the specs range.
If it's not engaging, you have a problem, usually a leak is the most common occurence with all the refrigerant haven been leaked completely out (a/c compressors won't engage below a certain amount of refrigerant as a safety precaution).
I guess that's the first start is see if it is engaging or not.
By the way, that heater valve allows coolant into your heater core. If you opened it up, obviously hot coolant will flow to the heater core and you get hot air out the vents. Not to insult your intelligence, but the temperature knob controls that valve so that when you want cool air, it shuts off the valve and obviously keeping it open will do no good in cool air performance. By adjusting it, trust me you did good. That was the last place I looked when I was looking at my a/c performance and I noticed it by chance one night when the night air was cool outside and the inner vents inside the car was bringing out warmer air.