What’s up with R134 prices?

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Mike69cuda

Mike69cuda

Mopar Moron
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I went to Walmart yesterday to buy some R134. It had doubled in price from $5 to $10!
 
At least in my experience, it always shoots up in price during the summer when everyone is trying to get their a/C system serviced. Supply vs. Demand
 
It is been up for awhile. About a year ago places like Oh ' Really?s was way over 10 bucks I was thinking near 20
 
Bought a half dozen last summer for $7, best price around by far.

Haven't priced it this year.
 
I haven't bought any since January. Glad I stocked up
 
I bought a keg a few years ago at Sams for $100 bill. I should have enough for a while.
 
Just like any other car parts. Up and up. Don't get me started on shipping costs :mad:
Bought a turn signal cam $8.99 Shipping $9.14. But gotta have it.
 
I bought a few of the big jugs a couple years ago. Just a matter of time before someone decides you cant buy it anymore. You actually have to take a class and get a cert to buy the big bottles. Wasnt hard at all, I passed it the first go.
 
Can’t even buy this stuff in Canada if you don’t have a license, even though R134a is the environmental friendly replacement for R12….

:BangHead:
 
It was $5 earlier this year at Walmart. I should have bought more. I guess I Neil just have to gut it and buy it before it goes up again.
 
Whenever they come with a new one the previous goes up in price. that's why I will continue to use R12 till I die!
 
Increase is partly because 134a is over, done for new cars for quite some time now. So, supply and demand, supply may be reduced somewhat.
 
As someone else said, r134a refrigerant started to be phased out about 10 years ago. Starting in 2021, any new vehicle sold in North America had to have r1234 instead of r134a.
 
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Rural King has been the cheapest for non-dye, non-leak seal R134a around here.
 
MOPARMAGA said:
It's illegal to sell in Washington state now, cocksuckers
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Yeah! I was going to hop across the border to pick up a few cans at Autozone or O’Reilly’s but WA banned the sale of it about 18 months ago.

Driving down to Oregon is a little far.
 
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Walmart in Las Vegas has R134 for $9.98 a can as of yesterday .
 
you guys are lucky.. my jeep takes r1234yf which is $40+ a bottle
 
H22A4 said:
As someone else said, r134a refrigerant started to be phased out about 10 years ago. Starting in 2021, any new vehicle sold in North America had to have r1234 instead of r134a.
Click to expand...
And if you thought 134 is expensive, just wait till you need THAT!!
 
$10/can is still cheap. If R-134A gets pricey like R-12, can always use HC refrigerant. I recall $10/can last time I bought a case. I use Duracool, but Envirosafe is another. Some are termed R-12HC or such. Works slightly better than Freon. Never a fire in millions of cars using it for decades, though many claim "explosive" which is absurd. An asteroid might hit you too. Used in home refrigerators in Europe.

If you want to fuss about prices, look at swimming pool chlorine. A 50 lb bucket cost $100 a few years ago, then jumped to $500 after a plant fire, now back to "only" $400 since the plant came back online a year ago.
 
Funniest thing is that R-134A was outlawed because a potent "greenhouse gas" (worse than CO2), so outlawed. It replaced R-12 which was outlawed since it threatened increasing the Ozone Hole. They don't talk about that anymore and turned out an unnecessary fuss. The media stories of the day about increased uV blinding sheep in Chile and deforming frogs in Costa Rica turned out bogus. Peruse the U.N. Climate site. In 2019, they were crowing "fixed it" since the Ozone Hole had shrunk. It became larger than ever in the years since even though manmade CFC's are gone, so they pivoted by rolling it into Climate Change, blaming cooler stratospheric air over Antarctica in Winter, due to CC causing air currents to change. It only exists over Antarctica in Winter when there is little sunlight anyway, so the whole fuss seems strange. 4x more chlorine is emitted by volcanoes than man ever did, and there is an active one in Antarctica (Mt. Erubus).
 
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