R134a or R404a

[jingua_ph]

Hi there!

Recently, my father bought a used 10 ton, reefer truck from Japan and its a Thermo King unit. Afterwards, we attempted to run the unit but there is no cold air coming out from the evaporator. We fixed the leak afterwards. However, we were a bit confused which kind of refrigerant we are supposed to use. It says on the unit that it uses R134a but on the other side of the unit, it says it can use R404a. Eventually we decided to use R404a. Then we encountered another problem. The unit cools very slowly. It took 2+ hours for the reefer to reach +6 degrees C from +25 degrees C. Are there any problems with regards to the use of R404a or are there any adjustments that the technician should do?

By the way, I checked the Thermo King website and found out that the reefer unit uses the Thermo King X214 compressor.

[Brian_UK]

Welcome, the temperature drop seems reasonable.

The unit has first of all to cool down the reefer truck itself.

If you want to check on which refrigerant it should use then look at the expansion valve, it should have a label on it showing the gas it is designed for.

[Latte]

Can you give us some more details of the unit.

Most Tk's use R404 i would be suprissed if it was on 134

Regards

Fatboy

[jingua_ph]

The unit is a Thermo King SUMD II MAX. It is an undermount reefer unit for straight trucks. When we bought it, it has no ***** so it kept us guessing which refrigerant we are supposed to use. In addition, there are so many stickers on the evaporator which says it uses R134a while the condenser says it uses R404a. Since it came with no instruction manual, I've tried to search around the internet some info on this unit. Since it came from Japan, I was able to come across on a Japanese website for Thermo King units. There I was able to obtain schematic diagrams, wiring diagrams and the reefer unit parts reference list on this reefer. Based on its parts reference list, there are two versions of the compressor that I have right now. The first one uses either R12, R502 or R503b while the other one uses either R134a or R404a.

I would really like to provide the link to the Japanese Thermo King parts website but I can't because I haven't satisfied the mininum number of posts yet.

[Peter_1]

As Brian said, the TEV will give you the exact answer.