How do you pull a vaccum on an Ideal 55 Slider?

[sjo426]

Working on restoring an Ideal 55 Slider and am working on the refrigeration........and by no means am I an expert in this area. I need to pull a vaccum on the system but I'm just not quite sure what I'm missing here. I've got a vaccum pump, I've got an AC manifold gauge, and from what I know (from researching car AC systems) I need to hook up the high side (red hose), the low side (blue hose), and the yellow hose to the vaccum pump. However on my compressor set up there is only one service port.

I'm hoping to be just overlooking something or that I just need the proper tool........much thanks for any help!

Shane

[johnieG]

Your Ideal 55 does indeed have only one port on the deck, it's the low side port (vacuum) there is no high side port if the deck is original.

So you need to hook up your blue hose to the ports 1/4" connection & then slightly crack open the decks valve stem about 1 full turn ( there may be a protective steel or brass cap covering the valve stem itself.) & just close off the red sides valve/knob of your gauge set * See Note below


Hook the yellow to your vacuum pump, open your pumps shut off valve & crack the bleeder port on the pump (if its got one) start the pump & away you go, after the gauge reads down around 20" of HG or so, close the bleeder port if you opened one & I assume you don't have a fancy electronic micron gauge, so you need to pull the vacuum down for at least an hour down to 30" of Hg (mercury scale) this will get you started & it's really a bit more involved than I'm describing, but I'm talking on a vacuum pump 101
level right now.

* NOTE FROM ABOVE...( or prep it by attaching it to your freon tank but DON"T open the tanks valve of course! just crack the red hose open in the beginning until you pull the hose down into a 30" vacuum to exhaust the trapped air inside the red hose side basically, then close the red side & continue on)

[sjo426]

Thanks for the quick and thorough response JohnieG! I'll let you know how it turns out.