So in a last ditch effort to charge the AC and determine if the system was all ok, I shaved down the broken high side port and tapped it for an 1/8" pipe plug. It turned out, my new tap was made wrong. One of the flutes was double cut, causing 1/4 of the cutting teeth to break off because they were super thin. But it still got the job done.
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So then with that 'repaired' I hooked up the vacuum pump and went to open the valve on the gauge set and the knob broke off.
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I swear everything I touch just ends up broken, lol.
But in the end I finally own something with working AC again! The belt tensioner pulley clearly isn't happy about it, but it all works. It blows 58* at idle which is pretty good for a sunny 90* day with high humidity. Especially considering I did absolutely zero maintenance to the system, it is even still running the original accumulator.
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