A few things on this. First off no you cannot remove the compressor without removing the AC lines which will result in the freon being released from the AC system. Freon is a compressed gas and it's dangerous. One time when I was a kid I was drilling through a broken bolt on the hood latch. The drill bit went through the bolt suddenly and penetrated the AC condenser in the front of the car. At the time I thought I had penetrated the radiator so I kept working. It took me about 5 minutes to realize it was the condenser and I was breathing in the freon. I nearly passed out and had breathing problems for several weeks after and I was outside the whole time doing this work. Long story short, Freon is really dangerous and you should have a trusted shop do that kind of work.

Evacuating Freon into the atmosphere is also illegal and really bad for the environment so in order to properly dispose of it you need some special equipment. Scotty does have a video on this if you want to know more about what tools you will need to tackle the job!

It takes alot of proper equipment to control and work on that kind of system. Its very expensive. If the system is clogged somehow, then many parts need to be changed and that's not cheap.

Those off-the-shelf recharging kits with a cheap low-side gauge are pretty much worthless. You need a full gauge set to really see what's going on. Even there, if you have a variable-displacement compressor you can't judge charge level by system pressures. You need to leak-check, fix any leaks, then evacuate the system and charge in the proper amount of refrigerant by weight. Modern systems are very sensitive to charge level, a few ounces one way or the other and it won't work properly.