gohanteeR12 R410 Refrigerant Charging Valve, R12 R22-1/4“ Male to 1/4” Female, R410-1/4" Male to 5/16" Female, Safety Adapter Flow Control Ball Valve for R12 R22 R410 Air Conditioner Manifold

Bought this on a whim, so glad I did. Much better than valves on ends of hoses with a core depressor added when necessary. Description does not say but these are precision core depressors that back seat, making it a fingertip control service valve on the end of your hose. Don't let the low price fool you, I have used these for weeks now every day under all conditions and can't find any fault. I assume that the seals will eventually wear out, but they send an extra set with the valves so even that is covered. I am tough on tools, and these have already lasted longer than some brand name core depressors, and no O-rings to shoot out when you least expect it. Larger valve is a joy to use on mini-splits. In every situation, no more accidental Freon or oil spills with a customer looking over your shoulder.

Worked as designed for.

Leaks around the stem and around where it connects to the flare fitting. Avoid these like other comments say

These do backseat, but they also release the schrader valve core stem a little before backseating. If attached to the high-side, this intermediate position allows everything from the external side of the (closed) high-side schrader valve core to be pulled through a fully purged manifold down to low-side pressure, leaving only refrigerant vapor outside the system volume.Only the 1/4"(F)-1/4"(M) unit has been tried, and it works fine. I disassembled the 5/16"(F)-1/4"(M) unit to check the design.Mine appeared to seal well enough for vacuum use, but then again, a schrader valve core plus this fitting will have terrible vacuum conductance.The side ports do not have schrader valve cores nor the machining to accept them. The 90-degree angle of this port can make it a bit awkward to leave on a hose while attached to a manifold storage fitting.Pay no attention to the poorly chosen colors of the stickers on the knobs!The white gaskets (presumably PTFE/Teflon) these come with do seal, but it takes way more tightening effort than softer seals. Fortunately, each size comes with one green elastomer gasket as well. A 12-24 screw (with minimal tapered lead-in) can extract the white gasket from the 1/4" unit. Unfortunately, common Yellow Jacket replacement gaskets do not fit, but the green ones seem generic and easy to source online if nothing else works.The upfront cost relative to repair cost probably means many will consider these disposable. The front is sealed with curing thread sealant on straight threads. It remains to be seen how well this sealant tolerates common refrigerants & oils. Front disassembly may require a thin wrench and reassembly will probably require thread cleaning and new curing thread sealant. The seal on the shaft at the rear is an o-ring, which could be expected to need occasional replacement, however no spares are included. Furthermore, the knurled knob at the back must be removed first, and it was installed with thread-locker (in addition to a set screw). A torch was very helpful removing this, but that means the backseat seal is at risk without simultaneous shaft cooling.I question how resilient the brass shaft is to bending or getting scratched where the o-ring travels. I would prefer if the shaft was a more durable material and had a smoother finish around the o-ring. Fortunately, the stem nut doesn't even need to be tightened all the way down to seal the shaft, so if the shaft is kept clean and lightly oiled, hopefully the o-ring will have a long service life. Again, it does work fine and there is no evident degradation so far.The knurled finger nut is attached to the rest of the fitting using a threaded retainer. Strong attachment is, of course, important to all that don't relish surprise projectiles, cold burns and/or loss of charge. I've heard that some other cheap import products for this industry retain their knurled finger nuts with round wire snap rings. While that can work well, I am NOT a fan of that design, especially at this price point, coming from shadowy merchants. Not only can that be a hard design to disassemble if necessary, but all it takes is a little mistake with the ring or it's grooves to appear functional, pass (the potentially non-existent) quality-control, but later fail under pressure (maybe after a little wear, twisting, yanking and/or vibration).

This valve does exactly what it needs to do, prevents the loss of liquid refrigerant when disconnecting the high side line from the service port. This also prevents the issue with what is known as freeze burn where that liquid refrigerant is spraying on your hand while trying to disconnect a stubborn line from the high side fitting and freezing your skin also known as frostbite.This kit comes with 2 different sized valves which are color coded with a red and a blue cap on the valve. The blue one is a 1/4 inch valve and the red one is 5/16. This can cause some confusion and has led to some bad reviews on this kit. In the HVAC world, these colors have a very different meaning. Red is for the high pressure or liquid line and the red manifold hose is connected to the port with the smaller line. Blue is the low pressure or vapor side and the blue manifold hose is connected to the port with the larger line. On most US split systems, both service ports are 1/4 inch and this is where some have issues. Since this set comes with both a red and a blue valve, it seems to make sense that the red one would be connected to the high side and the blue to the low just like the gauge set does but with this set that's not what the colors mean. If you attempt to connect the red valve to the high side, it's not going to fit as the red valve is a 5/16 and is too large to fit on the standard 1/4 service port and while the blue one is a 1/4 valve and will fit on the low side, you really don't need one on the low pressure side. Since you don't need this type of valve on the low pressure side, just use the blue one on the high pressure side and leave the other valve in the bag. If you do any work on a mini-split system where just about all of them use 5/16 valves, then the red one will come in handy because it will fit those systems and can even be used as an adapter from the systems 5/16 fitting to your manifolds 1/4 inch hose end fittings.Using the valve is pretty easy. Make sure that the valve is fully closed (knob turned counter clockwise until it stops). Screw the valve down onto the high side service fitting firmly finger tight just like with any other hose end fitting or valve. then while watching the gauge, begin turning the knob clockwise until the gauge begins reading pressure and then add one more full turn. If you feel any added resistance to turning the knob after the gauge starts reading, stop there or you could wind up damaging the service port which could cause a leak that is not easy to repair. When done and ready to disconnect, just turn the knob counter clockwise until it stops and it will both release the schrader valve and seal the manifold line, making it a low loss fitting as well. Then you can disconnect the valve from the service port with no real loss or chance of freeze burn. Just remember that the high pressure manifold hose is still containing liquid refrigerant and needs to be recovered or returned to the system thru the manifold set to the low pressure side before removing the valve from the manifold hose. The set does come with a spare set of seals in the bag and are in my case a different color that the ones already in the valves and even though they are both the same color, like the valves, are different sizes so look closely before replacing them when needed.

Everyone should use this valve, you screw it on connect your hoses then open the valve. No gas and oil spraying out when you try to connect to the AC valve.

Only needed the r410 adapter so I can’t speak for the other adapter in the pack. The valve appears and feels well built. It seals great under pressure and vacuum on the air conditioner side when the valve is closed. It also seals great on both sides under vacuum. I was able to pull over 29” and it held it for over an hour no problem. However once you start adding refrigerant to the system the side that connects to the gauges/vacuum pump had a small leak. I tried cleaning, realigning and tightening the fitting with a pair of pliers but it never would seal completely. It wasn’t enough of a leak to stop me from completing the refill but it shouldn’t leak at all so three stars.