General A/C Help

[cooldude919]

So ive been asked to look into fixing the A/C on my old 97 camaro, which now belongs to my siser. Around ~5 years ago the compressor starting making a grinding noise, so i used a different belt and bypassed it, so the a/c hasnt worked/been used in over 5 years. Back then i thought it was the compressor itself going, now that may car knowledge has expanded it seems like it may just be the a/c clutch or pulley, which is only around $60.

Given that, i m not sure which direction to go. I read that without it being used for that long the seals in the compressor may have dried out and leaked out all the r134a from the system. If thats the case, i think i could roughly do the following;

Replace compressor and drier (dont have to worry about taking out old r134a since its all gone).
Use vacuum pump to take all the air out of the system
recharge system
...
profit?


On the other hand by some miracle could the system still be somewhat sealed and intact? I need a good set of r134a guages anyway, so if i got a set and hooked it up, would it show some sort of pressure without running the compressor if there is anything left? If it shows 0 then i would know everthing has leaked out and i would go with the first option. It does have something left then i could replace the a/c clutch, and recharge the system and be good to go.

UPDATE
I checked the low side and it still had static pressure, dont remember exactly what it was, but i think it was around 50psi, so it seems the system is still charged. Got a replacement clutch and a tool from autozone, but it appears you need a specific one for the gm v5 compressor that they didnt have. Got a kit comming from amazon for $38 that can do the v5 among others

 

[97gst_spyder]

IIRC the static pressure of the Low port should be 86.x.