MACS Service Reports - 2015 - MAY3

SAE "BUYERS GUIDE"
air conditioning database at SAE).
Some very low volume luxury makes have been equipped
with R-1234yf systems and interestingly enough the Ferrari/
Maserati equipment supplier Moratech meets the latest SAE
J2843 specification. You'll find its equipment listed at macdb.
sae.org. So if a Ferrari dealer has a machine it wants to unload
and it's in good shape and the price is right, that would be a
true exception (and very unlikely at this stage). The leading
U.S. suppliers of recovery/recycle/recharge equipment all
have R-1234yf machines at the ready, although only Mahle/
RTI, Moratech, Symtech, CPS Products and Bosch/Robinair
have officially certified to J2843 and posted their data at the
macdb.sae.org website.
While J2913 is the SAE standard for R-1234yf leak
detectors, as noted in the previous article, the word is
that some R-134a detectors that meet SAE J2791 also
will pass J2913, although there may be some recalibrations required. If a detector has a label that says it
meets J2913, it must file the J2911 certification documents on that SAE website so you can check. But as indicated before, our advice at this point is: if you have
a J2791 detector, particularly a premium infrared unit,
wait and see. ■

macdb.sae.org

Except for older machines already in use, new equipment
for mobile air conditioning service must post the test results
on an SAE website (macdb.sae.org), per a new SAE standard
J2911. There were three editions of that standard and the latest, which is what you want equipment listed for, was published January 14, 2013. See Figure 4.
You can search this site and look for the results of its laboratory certification tests, including the name of the lab and
the test technician. The information covers recovery/recycle/recharge machines, recovery-only equipment (both for
pure and contaminated refrigerant), electronic leak detectors
and refrigerant identifiers. So if a salesman tells you he has a
certified machine for sale, you can see if the machine really
meets the standard.
Is there equipment out there that doesn't meet the applicable SAE standard? Yes, and this is not a condemnation.
For example, Cadillac was the first U.S. car maker to install
R-1234yf (in the Cadillac XTS). Those systems were out so
early that the equipment was built to an earlier version of
the standard, and effectively it's grandfathered into use. So
if a dealer wants to sell it, just understand that it's not the
latest and greatest, and we'd suggest you get equipment that
you'll find listed on macdb.sae.org (which stands for mobile

Figure 4: SAE's A/C equipment database lists all equipment that meets a specific SAE standard and posts all information required by SAE J2911, a new standard for
required performance data as determined by the testing laboratory.

May 2015

MACS Service Reports

http://macdb.sae.org http://www.sae.org http://macdb.sae.org http://macdb.sae.org http://www.macdb.sae.org

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of MACS Service Reports - 2015