Volvo 850 T5 air con failure

FFS! Does nobody bother checking through previous posts? This is the umpteenth time this has been asked recently.

In article , M Cuthill writes

Sorry to sound a walter of the first order but oddly enough our 850 aircon has just packed up and I don't see any previous posts relating to 850's ;)

But then again I haven't been in this group for that long!..

The issue is that all aircons the same & everybodys has gone wrong at the same time.:-) Anyway pay the man £55 to vacuum it, refill it with oil & gas, pressure test & put the leak detecting dye in & then if it goes wrong again you can find the leak.

all car air con almost without exception uses the same system, so any my AIR CON has died thread will tell you the answer, which is : Get the air con serviced by an expert, the cost will be a minimum of 50 quid to have it regassed, other faults are a lot more, but you won't know till an expert checks it.

mrcheerful

Use Blueyonder's text-only server, much better.

text.news.blueyonder.co.uk

Many thanks for all the info. The air con man came this morning--right to my front door-1 hour removing and refilling the system including fluero dye-and testing for leaks-he said filling from the low pressure side-the only option-since there is no high pressure port-takes about 20 minutes.He said I should run the system once a week for 10 minutes to ensure the lub. oil does not drain away from the compressor bearings.Cost a very reasonable £58 including VAT.System now working perfectly-note my system is a crude on-off air con-true climate control is much more comnplex and therefore more potentiall for faults to arise- a point I will bear in mind for my next car buy. Tom

Correct- there is no HP port on some Volvo's, the 800 and 70 series being one. You re-charge either by weight and/or more ideally by hooking up to the ECU and reading the HP figure direct from the ECU.

You should ALWAYS ALWAYS excercise the a/c all the year round.

I hope it stays working, as evaporator failure on these cars is all too commmon.

Tim..

not really, just get something decent and leave climate control to auto and just set the temp. occasionally (21.5 summer 24 winter ) Different temp each side if you like too. Lexus ,10 years old, works perfectly.

mrcheerful

Indeed- mechanical failures to the condensor / fan problems / compressor clutch wear aside, leaving the a/c on ALL the time is the best way to keep gas loss to a minimum.

Tim..

The Lexus struck me as an undiscovered gem-apart from the alloys-they just do nt seem to be up to the rest of the cars quality I refer to the big 3.5 ? model-I wanted one but even 8 years old they keep their price I got my 96 T5 for £4000 2 1/2 years ago a bit plasticky but only done 70000 miles FSH air con leather interior cruise control 230 bhp real fun to drive I regularly drive 240 miles down the M6 in it from Scotland summer and winter you can hear the plastic interior creak at 100 mph the engine is so quiet.Of course if you want economy buy a straight 6 auto BeemerApart from a VERY stupid decision on my part to get "the garage down the road" to do the cam belt its done 30000 trouble free miles-of course I use fully synthetic oil and change it every 5000 miles-it only costs £25 for the oil. Tom

note my system is a crude on-off air con-true

You probably mean the 4 litre v8 ls400. They are extremely nice, at 200 k miles the engines are still like brand new, for a dealer priced 50000 pound car a ten year old one makes about 5000 pounds, so they don't really hold their value at all !!! The wheels are easily re-furbed. General servicing costs are very low, especially if you diy. Even 15 year old ones don't have creaky interiors. Only failure on mine (GS300 with the straight

mrcheerful