Intermitant AirCon

Jun 20, 2005 7 Replies

I've acquired a car with an aircon problem. I'm told it was regassed last year.



It blasts out icey cold air for about 5 minutes before becoming totally ineffective for the rest of the journey. Next journey it will work again for the first five minutes. Each time as it begins to fail the air coming out smells kind of musty.



Does this ring any bells as to a possible fault?


In news: snipped-for-privacy@xtreme.pipex.net, studiosound decided to enlighten our sheltered souls with a rant as follows

It's probably been owned by one of the, extremely common, utter wankers that believes Aircon should only be used on really hot days "because it drinks loads of petrol". Use it all the time, or at least a few days a week, and it'll be fine.

Use it for 2 days a year and it'll soon go wrong, and flood all the newsgroups with posts saying things along the lines of "My aircon worked fine last year, but now it doesn't seem to be cold.". The system needs to be used to lubricate itself. It's like a woman, if you don't use it regularly, it'll dry up, stop working, and cause you to get hot and bothered for no reason other than your own tightfistedness.

HTH.

You are Swiss Toni AICMFP :o)

In news: snipped-for-privacy@individual.net, Carl Bowman decided to enlighten our sheltered souls with a rant as follows

*PROUD*

In message , Pete M writes

So having acquired this badly treated lady, how does one go about getting her er... "working" again?

What make and model of car? Sounds like a problem with some makes of A/C compressor (like the one fitted to my Volvo 850!) where the electro-magnetic clutch wears to a point where it won't engage when it's hot. The gap between the pulley and clutch plate should be between 0.3mm and 0.6mm and if it wears more than around 0.7mm this can happen - try and see what make compressor yours is and search the web for the tollerence. The one on my car is at about 0.9mm at the moment and has exactly the same fault as yours, and the gas level has been checked and is fine.

Some compressors must be replaced, others you can remove the driven plate and remove shimms to get the gap back within spec. On most cars you can remove the plate and adjust / re-fit on the car without removing the refrigerant pipes.

Alan.

agreed, my 18 yr old Honda air con still going ok.. use it or loose it !

Yep, do you know how to top up a freon system ? Is it possible ?

The system needs to be

so that must be where I'm going wrong with women then :0)

Simon

This is *exactly* the problem I have- intermittent and packs up with a musty smell. I hope someone replies with a likely cure. I know that the compressor is working okay, but beyond that....?

Regards, Jim.

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