[AC_Hacker]

I tried again today to find the leak...

I made an adapter to get from bicycle tube valve fitting to 1/4" flare so I could blow a lot of air into the heat pump, and hooked it up to the heat pump.

I have an air compressor with a pretty large tank, but I wasn't able to find the problem. I put a pressure gauge in line with the air compressor, and it's pressure would rise to about 80 psi, and quickly fall back when I let go of the air lever... but it seemed to hold at 50 psi, at least for a while... so strange.

I should be able to hear all that air leaking out, but so far, I haven't. I guess it's leaking out so fast that it doesn't build up pressure for me to hear any hissing sound.

I tried to find the leak with a smoke stick... but so far, it's evading me.

I tried the vacuum pump again this morning, but it just ran and ran and ran and after maybe twenty minutes, I could see from the manifold gauge that some kind of vacuum was occurring, but all the while, there was a major amount of air issuing out of the vacuum pump... lots of air... like the vacuum pump was just running free.

I also tried a micron gauge/vacuum pump test, which tells me that I need to get a fresh battery, and clean out the thermistor sensor with alcohol, and get fresh new vacuum pump oil and get a solid vacuum reading.

But there is something strange going on with the vacuum/pressure thing.

I wish I could just hook the air compressor up it and throw the whole thing into a tank of water and look for bubbles.

This should be the easy part.

-AC