Just thought I would throw this out to maybe head off any future disasters. One of the Border Patrol Mechanics at work has seen quite a few failures involving the AC line rubbing through, producing a hole and releasing the freon. He has come up with a clever way to head off this problem and it does not involve opening up the system.

The line is located directly beside the passenger side battery on the engine side of the battery. It is kinda sandwiched between the battery and the radiator/fan shroud. It is a vertical aluminum tube with a black screw cap that allows you to hook up a guage to it. This line is on the top and is easily accessible from the top. It kind of sticks up a little higher than the height of the battery if I remember correctly. If you look straight down on the line it does almost a ninety degree bend into the main AC line. Right after the bend there is about a 2-3" piece. That is the piece that is rubbing. It rubs against the big 3"-4" pipe that goes to the radiator area in the front. I thinks its the air cooler or inner cooler. The solution was a piece of 3/4" heater hose slid down over the line to protect it. He spays the line with WD-40 first for a little lubrication.

I checked mine and it had about a 1/2" clearance. It shows no sign of rubbing yet. Granted the Border Patrol's 250's are subjected to way more abuse than we would ever place on our personal vehicle. It never hurts to check out your own truck to make sure it's not rubbing. It may save you an expensive repair that's easily avoidable.

Hope this can help someone out.

 

Thanks for the heads up on this condition!

 

thanks ill check out

 

Welcome to FTE Jpat, nice piece of information for the regulars to check out. Are you suggesting our border patrols are a little hard on trucks.....

 

Hey, thanks for the "Welcome".

We like to think that the terrain is what's rough on the vehicles. We just have fun driving them.