Market Pricing

Price is always something I like to put into the mix, as cost and budget are certainly a factor in my own buying decisions. Here we have as good a collection as I could find, with prices for both the male and female couplings. Prices were taken on 12/10/2009. If you are outside the US and don't see your favorite shop listed, drop me a note with a link of the Quick Disconnects available and I'll try to include them if we have a QDC Round-Up V2. info@skinneelabs

There ya go, roughly US$40 to US$60 per loop to add quick disconnects, for the convince its certainly a reasonable price in my opinion. I did have a hard time finding somewhat reputable retails for the Colder's, I can't link to McMaster-Carr either. If you're on McMaster.com, Male part is 5385K55 and female part number is 5385K25 and slightly less expensive than the other retailers linked.

Conclusion

In the end, I can certainly say I was wrong on Quick Disconnects. They do not bring the restriction I thought they did to our loops, not sure what I was thinking or if I was just over concerned about it. Even looking at the most restrictive of the bunch, the VL3 only resulted in a 0.3GPM reduction on the test loop. The VL3N's which closely matched the HFC12's in pressure drop ended with the second lowest flow rates. As for the HFC12's, aesthetically lose out to the Koolance design but are certainly the jack of all trades in the round up. They have minimal loss easily taken care of by a paper towel and roughly a 0.15GPM flow reduction on our test loop, like I said jack of all trades. The Koolance VL4's take the restriction crown for this round up, edging out the Colder's, VL4's also come with the most loss or spill. Personally, I like the look of the VL4's over the Colder's.

However, my own favorite of the round up is the Koolance VL3N's. While they do lose out to the VL4's and Colder HFC12's its not by much, the big winner is the no spill. I wasn't sold on the VL3N's until I was running the test loop numbers and had to change pumps which meant disconnecting both sets of couplings... I didn't have to worry about the spill. The VL3N's will be finding their home on my bench that's for sure. I do have to point out that with 3 to 1 odds in the round up it was likely that a Koolance quick disconnect would be the winner and another model the loser. For me the purpose of the round up was more about finally seeing what sort of restriction we were talking about with QDC's. I believe we've accomplished that along with taking a look at loss or spill.