Many apologies for the delay in updating this thread. I received the new part on Thursday (a revised part from Mitsubishi) and my son arrived bright and early this morning - eager to get started.
He removed and disassembled the indoor unit - talk about filthy. Are you ladies/gentlemen cleaning the blower wheels annually? If not you might want to consider it.
It definitely took longer for him to disassemble because of all the photos he took so I could document the procedure. He cleaned all the parts and took the blower wheel outside to pressure spray out the gunk. He installed the new heat ex. and took about the same time to assemble due to all the photos. The unit is back on the wall and looks like new.
Outside, he inspected the flares and discovered they were damaged (not the word he used) on the side connecting to the indoor unit. He suspected the A/C repair people over tightened them as they were slightly warped. He removed all four of the flares and re-flared them. A little nylog and he torqued them to spec. He was then able to vacuum the system down to 67 microns in about 5 minutes. He isolated the pump from the gauge and let it sit for an hour. It drifted to about 90 and held.
And we're now in the stage where he pressured the system with dry nitrogen. We monitored it for an hour and it's held pretty steady. The temps are dropping outside so he's going to come back in the morning to check if the pressure is still holding. He'll then open the valves and pull another deep vacuum and weigh in the charge...
Fingers crossed... And some photos.. In one of the photos you can see the refrigerant leak (oil) on the left front side of the heat ex.
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