Every Summer I am getting ripped OFF

[phyberlink]

Hi,
Every JUNE I take my car to the shop, they charge me over $100 to put FREON & I drive it for 3 months and by then fall is here and I forget about it. So last JUNE they put a color DYE & took it back after a week, and no one knows where the leak is. So here are the facts, for three years the FREON lasts of that summer only, last year no one was able to detect the leak. So, does anyone knows of a good Air Conditioning shop here in Northern Virginia not too far from D.C. ? I really do not know how to approach this issue, I do not trust these gas stations, they do not know what they are doing, they are amateurs.

Thanks in advance.

[js81]

Not a "solution" per se... buy why not just gas it up yourself? Not hard to do and takes all of 10 minutes and $20. I'd hazard to guess that $20 a summer (or even twice a year) to gas it up yourself would be cheaper than truly getting it fixed. :-) Does your car use R134a refrigerant? My 96 does, but I don't know about earlier models...

[RemoLexi]

Do NOT fill it yourself with that garbage auto parts stores sell you.

First; you have a leak somewhere, most common is the AC compressor itself.

The freon you fill yourself from auto parts stores contains a sealer which clogs up and ruins AC machines. You'll end up with a car nobody will ever want to work on your AC system because its not possible to even clean that crap out.