Changing air conditioning compressor (V70)

Ian gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:

That loud whooosh is very illegal, very environmentally unfriendly and very probably very flammable. Don't.

Oh, and I trust you're not including K-F in "professionals"...?

various other bits need renewal to avoid early failure. the system will also need flushing. gas release is a bad idea. incorrect fitting will lead to premature failure. an expert is needed for a satisfactory repair.

Althoug if it's already gone whoosh it's not very difficult, you do need to be scrupulously clean & change the receiver dryer.

bizarrely Kwik fit aren't bad for regassing as rather than try & train the monkeys they've just got the fully automated vacuum, purge oil & gas machine, you just need to make sure they put the right weight of oil & coolant in & being kwik fit their chart isn't necessarily right. However by the time you've added on a trip to kwikfit/elsewhere to vacuum it down & then the trip to regas it at the end the pros may not be much more expensive.

What is the operating fluid in car air conditioning these days?

No, but I am told that they regas a treat.

Ian

The car is basically undriveable at the moment: the water pump, steering and alternator drive belt is running over the seized compressor pulley. I might make the local independent garage 4 miles away, who are good, but almost certainly not the only nearby place advertising car air conditioning (25 miles) or the nearest dealer (70 miles).

However, I notice the general pessimism about home repairs to such things, and it's booked into the local place on Monday.

Bloody thing. Goes like stink, least reliable car I have ever encountered. Belgians can't make Volvos,

Ian

R134A

generally the compressor clutch will still turn freely if the air con is turned off, many people drive for years with the compressor seized, you have been unlucky to get the compressor disintegrate so badly that it jammed the pulley too.

Thanks.

OK, not too nasty, then. Low toxicity, save by asphyxiation, and non- flammable though flames can decompose it into nasties.

I'll still pay for this job, though.

Ian

There's quite an impressive amount of swarf coming out of the clutch, too.

However, thanks for the advice, all. I have now ordered a second hand but warrantied compressor and new receiver-drier and expansion valve.

Ian

Have you looked to see if a mobile AC guy can come and vac out the gas, and refil afterwards? There's a mobile guy around here.

Neither can the Dutch. My parents dismal experiences with a 340DL and

480ES in the '80s meant that both them and I have avoided Volvos like the plague ever since.

In particular, the final hilarious nail in the coffin was an early

480ES that had numerous faults and was built worse than any British car I've ever seen. Volvo denied anything was wrong and passed the blame back to the driving technique of my mother and/or her teenage sons. Eventually, she got pissed off and trotted off to a Honda dealer.

When presenting her 480 (not old) for trade-in, the Honda salesman said he could only offer a low trade in value as the 480 had numerous design flaws. He then recited, from a folder, every fault my mum had been complaining to Volvo about for years. No more Volvos for them and none for me thanks!

YMMV.

I owned a 480ES. It was witgout a doubt, the most unreliable, thrown-together piece of crap I have ever driven, and that list includes an Allegro. Best thing I did was crash the damn thing.

my brother liked the look of the 480es and asked me to find him one, I didn't, I did find him a very nice cavalier coupe thing which went on for years and years with very little aggro. A better choice I reckon.

There's many better choices. Practically enything, for example.

I got soundly stitched up with mine, but even allowing for that, it's a crap car. They handle OK, and performance was OKish too, but that's about it.

I discovered a major gearbox problem on mine a few moths after buying it- drive it over 60 for any time and it blew gearbox oil out the breather. This took months to notice as I was only travelling in to central Birmingham most of the time. It showed up as the gearbox got noisy on the way home from Scotland. The previous owner had routed the breather to a catch bottle hidden in the depths. No one could explain why the oil loss might happen, so I got a s/h box, and had a go at fitting it- with a few mates- between us we'd done similar jobs on Golfs, Polos and Hondas, so while not experts we weren't complete noobs either. We gave up and I paid a garage.

Add to that arches that were just starting out on a career of rot, a failed battery and alternator within a few months, various bits dropping off, and a variety of numerous niggly electrical faults that appeared, I was glad to be rid of it and get a Mk2 Golf, and get the mpg back over

1. It also had a habit of flooding if you stalled it when cold, but ran perfectly otherwise with no emission problems.

I know the floorpan was one of those shared ones (Mitsubishi?), and the engines/boxes Renault, but you'd find random bits of VAG labelled wiring too. It was also fiendishly complicated electrically for the time, with a CEM (central electronic module) that was, I suppose, a forerunner of today's covenience ECU or body ECU. It had most of the relays built in, and soldered to a PCB. I'm pretty competent with car electrics, but still had to buy the factory manual to get anywhere with it.

Some kind person broke the aerial, which was a dealer-only part, and that would have been a clear £100. This was back in about 1996.

That's an interesting idea, but unfortunately I am w-a-a-a-y out in the sticks. I'll ask around, though.

Ian

in the big scheme it will make little difference in reality if you release a few ounces of r134 gas.

Damning praise indeed!!!

Did you get the hellish tyre wear? Also, more rarely seen because it required that you idle the car after about 1 mile from a cold start (traffic lights in our case) was that the engine ecu had no clue what to do at some points. You'd be sitting at the lights, feet off the pedals in neutral revving at normal idle then the revs would collapse and the blasted thing would stall! It would restart fine but what a piece of junk. Did this every time at those lights. I ended up sitting on the accelerator like a boy racer to keep damned thing going!

I also remember door trim falling off and the stupidly heavy doors sagging..and being transfixed by the mpg display!

I thought the performance (non turbo 480) was gutless and weak but I did rate the handling and grip.

Far too many negatives though..and rubbish treatment from Volvo (which was worse).

In message , The Real Doctor writes

Yeah, no smoking while you're messing around with the stuff, apparently it decomposes into something like mustard gas although that could be a bit of an urban legend.

Probably a good idea, you might also want to make sure they flush the system too, it's distinctly possible the old compressor has dumped a load of metal into the system which could eat your new compressor in short order.

It's not actually that difficult to build your own gas/regas unit for AC systems but it's not particularly cheap as there are a few fairly expensive bits needed (vacuum pump being the most expensive single bit) so unless you're going to make a career out of it, pay someone else as you suggest.