Buick A/C

It stirs my ire to talk about Buick A/C systems, because just about everyone I know has had trouble with them.

I am certainly not an expert at these systems, but you might try the following:

Make sure you don't have any vacuum leaks or blocked lines, first of all. Check all vacuum hoses, vacuum cannister connections, etc. If you lose vacuum to a key point, the AC may not function correctly. I believe the doors within the HVAC plenum are controlled by vacuum in your car.

BUT, Buicks are also notorious about failure in their dammittohell electronic HVAC computer. Maybe there is a diagnostic tool to wring these out, but I dont have one...

A new one of these typically runs several hundred dollars ($600 the last time a friend took her car to the dealership.) If you are handy and persuasive, you might get someone at a wrecking yard to lend you one to try out.

Maybe someone else has the better information for you.

Default air flow with no vacuum supplied to the HVAC system is to the windshield.

CHeck the rubber hose from the vacuum distributor on the intake plenum (firewall side of plenum - you'll have to remove the sight shield to see it) to HVAC system. I'll bet that if that hose is original it is leaking like a sieve!

Regards, Bill Bowen Sacramento, CA

"lajim1030" wrote:

Hmmm...glad you mentioned this.... my girlfriend has a 1994 Buick Regal, no a/c. I charged it, but never had the time to troubleshoot so she brought it into a friend who works at a service station. Friend said ....something....I don't think she understood exactly what, but the end result is he ran a wire to something under the hood, and put a toggle switch on her dashboard. Whenever she wants a/c she just has to hit the switch and it works. I haven't had the time to even look at the thing to describe exactly what he jumpered.

ps...he charged $300.00 for running a wire and a sp toggle switch --- but she wasn't going to get it fixed any other way.... during the hot summer months it was more than worth it !!! The cost of the wire and switch was about 4 bucks the other 296.00 was for knowing what to jumper around.

All he did was hot wire the compressor clutch bypassing all the safety circuits in the system. If she sees smoke coming from the dash or hood tell her to bail out fast....

Hmm..this might shake up the priority of items on my "honey do" list". I think maybe it's time for a "look see".

It sounds as if the Buick AC is a decendent of the auto temp system in the 76 Pontiac Gran Prix I once had - this 'thing' had an air intake on the dash that went to a sensor on a chassis behind the glove box that had several vacumn motors connected to it along with a bunch of vacumn hoses to move a lever that had a cable attached to it that ran to the actual temp setting lever on the heater control....talk abt a Rube Goldberg setup....naturally both the hoses and vacumn motors would go south - and were hard to get even from the dealer, although at least not $600!

"Woody" wrote in news:8f0Ng.131$ snipped-for-privacy@newssvr21.news.prodigy.com:

10 feet of wire and a switch was not the 300 buck charge! it wuz the knowledge of finding the correcct green wire.........hopefully the wizard hooked it upstream of the cutout switches for comp. safety.......im not downplaying his repair. i have done simular in my youth and may do it again in my retirement years.......300 does sound pricey for a quickey tho........kjun