So far this year I haven't been able to turn the A/C on. The defroster vent tines in the dash broke out, fell down, and jammed the blend door on full-hot. I've been keeping the fan off and the vents closed this summer. The worst part is that I have to disassemble the entire front half of the interior to get the HVAC box out. I've considered buying a refrigerant recovery machine in the past, but at $1000, I was out. Then I checked on Amazon.
I got my $300 refrigerant recovery machine in last week. I don't need it to perfectly vacuum the system, I just need it to capture most of the refrigerant. Unfortunately it has R12 fittings on it and the refrigerant tank. Today I finally got my R12 to R134 adapters. The refrigerant tank had a bit of vacuum on it, but as soon as my vacuum pump started pulling, it got a fair bit of air out of it. I'm gonna keep the vacuum on it for a couple hours, and tomorrow evening it's supposed to only be 92*F, so I might take that opportunity to start sucking the refrigerant into the tank and disassembling the interior.