Whats a good way to pull the AC compressor?

Gentlemen,

The bearing my 2000 is making a hell of a racket these days and I honestly never use my ac so I've ordered a bypass pulley to toss in her for the time being and ill fiddle with replacing the bearing at my own leisure. I've searched around a bit and installing the pulley appears to be pretty straight forward of a job but I'm interested in seeing if there's a way I can seal the lines going to the condenser and thus not ruining it(as far as i know exposing this to atmosphere is death for it, not to mention blasting its contents out is legal) allowing me to pull just the compressor or maybe pull the entire setup out whole thus keeping the system sealed. Either way my goal here is to be able to get the compressor out(Hell, there's enough room behind it that it looks like I could just shove it back and secure it to whatever will have it) so that I may repair it while leaving the parts involved reusable. Or is this like a "fix it in the bay or its toast" type situation. I was unable to find a write-up on the subject, likely because it is so straight forward, and I'm curious about how others went about doing this or maybe anything complicated I should expect to encounter.

Thanks, 2000 161k on clock, <3k on motor

Most any shop that services A/C can drain it for you. Remove the compressor and tape over the ports. There isn't much else to be done. More than likely with the miles on the system and being exposed to any kind of air for any amount of time the dryer will probably need to be replaced anyway once you decide to put it back together.

Yes take it to a shop and have them evacuate the system. Once that is done remove the compressor and tape the lines over just to keep debris out. It would not be a bad idea to go ahead and replace the dryer while you have it all apart but may not be necessary. When you hook it all back up you will have to take it have a vacuum put on the system prior to charging it, that will remove any atmospheric air from the system.

sounds good. that dryer is pretty reasonably priced so no big there.

thanks fellas

Go buy a JY AC compressor and build an on board air set up?