Air Con - i'm frying!

[lucas123]

Typical - tried the Aircon the other day (really hot with black leather seats)- the light comes on ok, but no cold air! Anyone had this before - or anthing i can check before i have to pay silly money to get a garage to sort it?


Thanks


ps. I Left a Carrera 4 at the lights the other day & although it must have looked pretty cool, without aircon it feels pretty damn hot!

[wazza]

The sooner you get it to a garage the better. I had it pump out normal air once (it needed the refridgerant recharging) and left it until I could afford it. Then the compressor ceased and would actually stall the engine.
Ouch.

[teknobod]

It may be worth having the system checked before having it recharged, as Air Con does not usually need recharging unless it has a leak.

(I paid for my UR Quattro recharging some years ago only to find that the refrigerant leaked out again straight away from a faulty joint. Still had to pay for the recharge though!!)

Andy

[DavidR]

My friend has the opposite problem with a 964c4. He can find no company who are prepared to recharge the system without 1st doing a pressure check...

[DavidT]

As people have said, the chances are that it has sprung a leak.

Take it somewhere reputable and they will charge it with a dye added then use an ultra-violet lamp to find the leak. Once fixed you are away (there is no need to empty and re-charge the system as the dye does not cause any problems)

If the a/c compresser is not used for too long the bearing will fail, that's probably what happened to Paul.(you are supposed to use the a/c for 10 minutes or so every couple of weeks to keep it lubricated.


Good luck,

David

[Morpheous]

Part of the recovery and recharge of the system involves evacuating the system to remove moisture from the receiver drier. A sensitive vacuum gauge will detect leaks in the system when the vac pump is switched off. You are also correct with the use of the dye.
A very important point is to make sure oil is put back in the system after evacuating. A small ammount of oil flows around the system, if a component such as the evaporator is replaced, you must add the quantity of oil that component would typically hold which is in the manual. This prevents lack of oil in the system causing premature bearing failure in the compressor. All good ac service techs will do this as a matter of course, which is why they dont just gas the system up. R134a is the gas used as of 92/3 when R12 started to rocket in price due to the cfc crackdown.
The molecules for R12 were larger than that of R134a and as such you didnt loose gas as easily.
The major problem was people never turned the system on over the winter which allowed the o ring seals to dry out which allowed the gas to escape, hence warm air in the summer. Todays systems run as soon as the system is turned on to help prevent this. The benifits for winter use is it takes the moisture out of the air helping the demist. If the stat on the evapourator is set too cold though, the screen used to ice up. But thats another story.

[Dippy]

Morpheus, is there anything you don't know about?

I leave my climate control on 24/7, as I thought that it can be a problem leaving it off for extended periods...

[s4chris]

if you live in the herts area, i can re-gas it for you, you also have self diagnosis on the climate control which when operating certain buttons will carry out diagnosis 07961 815836, chris