'00 Voyager Compressor questions

A good reman. will normally be same as OEM, life-wise. Do not ebay it. Go local, where you can get return IF it goes west. Doubt expansion valve needed, after all, you state doing new oil, etc.

I can appreciate the thought of going local, as I've done this in the past with performance shocks. However, we're talking about a significant savings that I'm loathe to turn down, so I may still go that way. Autozone quotes $290 for reman, $370-400 for new. I see these compressors on ebay all the time for Go local, where you can get return IF it goes west. Doubt expansion

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You need to know what happened first. If in fact the compressor did seize then you need to flush the system and I would replace the orifice along with the dryer. If the compressor did not seize there isn't any real reason to have to flush. The compressor warranty may require that you replace the orifice as well as the dryer.

I haven't had very good luck with rebuilt compressors . Especially stay away from the "Four Siezens" compressors sold at the discount auto parts places. The labor to flush the system, dryer, orifice and vacuum / recharge are at least half the cost of repair. If you buy a cheesy rebuilt compressor that fails in short order all that money is lost.

If the compressor did seize I would take it to an A/C shop for repair and use what ever compressor they recommend. This way if it fails again you have a warranty on the entire repair. If you replace the compressor and have them do all the rest your savings can quickly go up in smoke since no shop is going to warranty parts you put on.

If the compressor didn't seize then go have the 134a recovered, replace the compressor dryer and orifice and have the shop vacuum it and recharge. If you think you are going to do more a/c work in the future it may be worth it to you to go ahead and buy a vacuum pump (about $250) and a decent set of gauges (about $100). Years ago I found that I could buy all the tools and fix it myself for the same price a shop wanted to do the job. Those tools have come in handy at least half a dozen times since then and I consider them to be a wise investment.

Steve B.

Unless your a certified A/C tech!! Your going to need to take it in! Any type of A/C service almost always requires a certified A/C tech to work on the A/C system.

Thanks for the thoughtful advice. You brought to mind some things that I didn't think of in my original post. The AC ceased blowing cold last fall according to my wife. I hadn't driven the car much, so it was hard for me to tell, but it didn't seem to be cycling on at all. As we went through the winter, the bearings started to complain, and the funny thing was that the idler pulley for the belt around the crank, alt, and compressor was making noise too. I narrowed that down by pulling the idler and checking it. It had some definite roughness in the bearings. I replaced it and the noise went away. Two weeks later, I'm on my way to JFK airport (a 2 hour trip), halfway there and I'm starting to hear bearing noise! I got to the airport, and about halfway home, it started to complain a little bit more occasionally. About a half hour from home, it started to complain loudly, then it got quiet. Then the alternator light came on!

As this was mid-January in upstate NY, I removed the idler, bought a belt for a non-AC car and removed the remains of the clutch assembly. The clutch all but fell off. The

So, now, I'm thinking quite a bit harder about all of this. I just checked, and for sure, the compressor is siezed. I also put the low side only pressure guage I've got on the line. It does have pressure in the low side. I'm not sure how accurate the guage on my $20 charging hose is, but it reads about 65 psi. They don't make it easy to get to! The compressor is on the bottom of the motor, and the low side port is on the hose where I have to reach in between the front of the motor and the radiator under the intake ram.

I truly wish I could afford to buy a vacuum pump. I see electric vacuum pumps on ebay for a little over $200. What about the vacuum pumps that operate on compressed air? They're a lot cheaper, but how do they work?

Steve B. wrote:

The pulley is seized or the compressor is seized? I suspect that the bearing in the pulley has failed and it seized up. The compressor is actually driven by the clutch assembly on the front of the unit. Sounds to me like the clutch is missing from your unit now. This could be good news if only the pulley seized. You probably still need a new compressor but at least you won't have a system full of shrapnel.

Not very well. The principle is that the air rushing through the unit provided by the compressor will draw a vacuum on the system. My neighbor tried to use and while it worked somewhat it didn't draw a deep enough vacuum to boil the moisture out of the system.

Steve B.

The EPA switched to R134a because it was environmentally friendly, so what is the problem? ;-)

And watch it burn up the second you engage the compressor.

Oh dear, looks like Chrysler doesen't care about the environment either, all those bad evaporators.

Ted

They work fine if you have a good compressor. I have one and I have a floor compressor that runs off 220v and it draws vacuum down to the required level (22Hg I think it is, but I forget) and I could clearly see boiling moisture in the clear tube that I had running from the vacuum to the system. (I put in a few water droplets to see what would happen) The key with these is to run 3/4 inch or larger hose from the compressor tank to the vacuum.

I also recommend you add 2 things, a valve that is between the vacuum port and the system and a vacuum guage. When the system is completely evacuated, you will want to close the valve then shut off the vacuum then leave it overnight, to see if there are any leaks. If the system is leaking in the morning you will have no vacuum in it.

Ted

"Steve B." wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

Hey Steve,

You can probably fix this, I've done A/C work on my families vehicles for the last 24 years because it's so fragging expensive, and it is not hard. It is just time consuming.

Couple of things you need to keep in mind if you are contemplating this yourself:

1) The A/C compressors today are not anywhere near the quality of the old York and Hitachi compressors that were piston with a crank and an oil sump type of compressors. They are very very very sensitive to dirt, moisture, dust, you name it, in the system. When you put a new compressor in one of these vehicles you absolutely must flush the system, and it must be absolutely clean. These compressors are also more sensitive to the wrong amounts of refrigerant and oil in the system.

2) The only way to flush the system is to completely take it apart, take every joint apart, and flush each section with refrigerant flush (or mineral spirits), both directions, and run at least 3 minutes of dry compressed air through each section to be absolutely sure you have no flushate left in each section. You must have a compressor and you must have a flush bottle and flush gun to do this. When you put everything back together you must have new o rings for each joint, and the o rings must be special material that resists refrigerant oil. And they must be the exact correct size and you must be meticulous about putting the joints back together or they will leak. (oil the rings with refrigerant oil and make sure the seats are clean, and that the rings are in correctly.)

3) Since your compressor seized, you are actually lucky. Other guys that don't have seized compressors, but just have an A/C system that isn't cooling, they have to spent a lot of time with pressure guages and the like, trying to determine if they don't have to open the refrigerant system up. In your case you already know the compressor is gone so you can just throw out everything in the system and start fresh.

4) You will need to replace the expansion orifice, and accumulator as well as the compressor, and as well as flushing everything, if you want to have a shot at this repair working.

5) When refilling the system guages don't really help much. What you want to do is find the factory spec for the amount of refrigerant the system takes and the amount of oil the system takes. The reman compressor you get will have no oil in it, nor will the new accumulator, and the system won't either once you get done flushing it

6) You will need an electronic leak detector and a vacuum. You should put the system under vacuum overnight and if it doesen't hold it is leaking. If it holds then put oil in it then put it under vacuum agaiin. PAG refrigerant oil is incredibly hygroscopic and will suck moisture out of everything, so you want to boil the system with oil in it to be sure. Also note that the system requires heat to boil out the water under vacuum, so the warmer it is when you boil out the system, the faster you will get the water out of it. Once your ready then charge the system and sweep the system with the electronic leak detector. Tighten any leaking joints.

7) Remans will not last the same amount of time that a brand new compressor will last. A brand new compressor from the factory in a new vehicle, you might manage to get 10 years out of it. A good reman will probably last a bit more than half. A cheap reman will last at most 2-3 years, assuming that it does not grenade 3 weeks after you put it in, or leak as soon as you install it. (the last cheap reman I bought, a Holly reman, did just that) And if it does grenade you will have to do the job all over again, which means another new accumulator, expansion orifice, o-rings and system flush.

8) With the exception of the recovery machine (which is economically out of the question for a home user) the minimum tooling required to do A/C repair will cost probably around $300-$400 if you get it used. This probably is going to equal the labor for an A/C tech to fix the system, so the first system you do you won't realize any savings. But, the next time you do a system you will save a lot of money. And more importantly, a number of A/C shops out there are cheats and take short cuts. A very common shortcut I've seen is shops not putting the system under vacuum for a long time. I had one shop evac the system for about 5 minutes, and shut off the vacuum pump while I could still see condensation coming out of it, and tell me that the system was ready! That was years ago when I was still playing around with trying to get A/C shops to do some of the work for me. Length of time to boil out a system is a rather touchy subject for A/C shops because none of them can afford to have a car tied up for hours and hours to evac the system, and I've heard lots of A/C techs at shops tell me that the system doesen't need a lot of time to get boiled out. However when we got central A/C in our home, the furnace tech that installed it (in a home system they weld the fittings to the lines, and don't use flex tubing so there is not the problems with leaks as in a mobile system) boiled the system for 5 hours and told me that he never installs A/C systems without doing this. (and has never had a come-back, either)

Ted

The laws regarding recovery, are primarily aimed at garages and commercial enterprises. Consumers are exempt, and while I try to be environmentally friendly and ocnscientious, I'm not at all concerned about a small discharge, especially when many systems simply leak out.

That being said, I really appreciate the comments of all.

My compressor is definitely siezed. It's not the clutch, which someone suggested. I guess they didn't read the part of my post where I said the clutch literally fell off when I was putting on the non-AC belt and removing the tensioner. After it grenaded itself, it was just hanging on the compressor shaft and when I touched it, it fell off onto the floor with a clang. It met a very unhappy end; so unhappy in fact that it looks as though the retainer bolt in the center of the shaft broke. There were marks on the idler pulley where the bearings must have hit, and metal shavings everywhere. Subsequently, I grabbed the shaft with a pair of pliers, and it does NOT turn. That's a pretty clear cut diagnosis!

By simply changing out the compressor for a reman and replacing the expansion valve and drier, I'll realize a large savings. I'll save on the shop labor, and the markup on the parts as I'd get charged retail for them. I'm at the point in my life where I carefully weigh the cost and value of having someone with the right tools work on my car. Four kids and the reality of activities and carting them around make my time valuable, so I have to limit some of the things that I might reasonably do if I had the time. Kids are only young once, and I don't want to miss out.

I know you've already gotten a bunch of advice, and probably stopped reading the thread. I like acsource.com and .net (they're connected). Just bought a Nippendenso 10PA17 off there, brand new, for $250.

I do not believe this is true, I've been over the EPA website pretty carefully and there is no mention of any exemption for venting refrigerant.

As they say, well duh. I think most burned up clutches I've seen have been on seized compressors.

Except that you have about a 20% chance of this repair lasting.

Without flushing the system as I instructed, chances are high that foreign debris will go into the reman compressor and wreck it.

Sounds like you need to make up your mind.

Ted

True enough- I've got a 5-HP compressor that can run one of the venturi-type vacuum pumps, and I've used it many times to evacuate car AC systems prior to rechargning.

But the easiest thing is to swipe the compressor out of an old refrigerator or SMALL (