Fords price for the AC schrader valves worth it?

[Kumba]

Ford (or motorcraft) wants $25 for the high side and $17 for the low side schrader valves for the AC fill ports. That certainly seems a little rich to me.

Anyone ever had any problems with the aftermarket valves? Pretty sure I've still got the OEM lines on my car so figured I might as well throw valves and o-rings at them if they are in good shape.

 

[oddball]

Usually schraders are universal. A/C schraders use a different kind of seal than tire schraders, but it's still a standard valve. My local hydraulics shop would just hand me a few when I had them re-do some lines.

 

[Kumba]

I'm pretty sure I have the OEM lines on the car so they're approaching 11+ years of age. In the past I would normally just replace the lines but Motorcraft wants $200+ for the Compressor line and the Evaporator line looks like about as much fun to replace as a hard kick in the junk.

So my current plan is to clean and de-grease the lines (my AC compressor leaked from the front seal, YAY!) and see if the rubber is oxidized or cracking anywhere. If it looks pretty good then I'm just going to flush the lines and rebuild them with new valves, caps, and o-rings. My choices are pretty much ReadyAire and 4Seasons for $14 roughly on the valve/cap kit. No clue which one Napa actually resells/relabels but looks like the 4seasons one.

I don't suppose anyone can honestly give me a recommendation to use 4Seasons AC lines? I wouldn't touch one of their compressors to save my life, but maybe their hoses aren't as bad as I remember. It has been probably 10+ years since I've had to do any AC work on a car.

 

[oddball]

It's hard to get a line wrong. You can also have your local hydraulic shop just replace the rubber sections of your old lines. No real need to "flush" the lines unless your compressor chewed itself apart.

 

[Kumba]

But if you could get it wrong, 4Seizens would figure out how!

And the system works for the most part. The compressor seal is leaking at the hub which is a common failure and the AC isn't blowing that cold at an idle. So since I at least need to replace the compressor I'm going to do that along with a few other things and then re-evaluate it when I'm done. I could still have something else like the fan not going into high gear or working correctly that could be causing my not-so-cold while idle issue.

It's hard to get a line wrong. You can also have your local hydraulic shop just replace the rubber sections of your old lines. No real need to "flush" the lines unless your compressor chewed itself apart.