By retrofitting your Porsche air-conditioning system with R-134a, you can keep yourself and the earth cool

If you own a pre-1993 Porsche, such as a 1973 911, a 1981 924, or a 1986 944, at some point in the future your vehicle will need its air-conditioning system serviced.

Automotive air conditioning has been around since the 1940s and little has really changed since the first systems were developed. However, the reevaluation of the Montreal Protocol—a multinational, worldwide agreement that concerns itself with the depletion of the upper ozone layer—is having a major impact on the auto air-conditioning industry, which has used CFC R-12 refrigerant, aka Freon—an ozone-depleting substance—almost exclusively until the 1994 model year.

Why the change?

In 1990 alone, 122-million pounds of R-12 were released into the environment. The depletion of the ozone layer increases the amount of radiation which enters the earth's atmosphere. There has been significant scientific evidence of increased radiation levels in the environment. Higher levels of radiation result in a trend of global warming which accelerates the melting of the polar ice caps. The sun's rays will have higher levels of ultraviolet rays when exposed to cause skin cancer and other radiation poisoning.

In case you haven't yet heard, Freon is no longer being produced. And, if you own a pre-1993 Porsche, at some point in the future, your vehicle will need its air-conditioning system serviced. Fortunately, the automobile industry, in conjunction with the Society of Automotive Engineers, has established retrofitting procedures for upgrading your existing CFC R-12 auto air-conditioner to HFC R-134a, a non-ozone-depleting refrigerant. R-134a is currently being installed in most new production vehicles. (Porsche introduced R-134a A/C systems in all of its 1993 models.) This compound is currently the only refrigerant acceptable by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

A vehicle's air conditioner works by a process in which the refrigerant in the system is constantly changing from a gas to a liquid state. This evaporation process cools the vehicle.