Matrix AC

UGH! You said Focus in the same post as Matrix.

Stay away from the Focus!Everyone I know has trouble with those!

We have an 05 and the A/C is not the best I've ever had but it has been satisfactory through our 100 degree plus summer this year in Ca.

My wife's Matrix seems not to 'cool' nearly as well as my Corolla does...I complained about it and the Service Manager stuck a thermometer into the cabin outlets and we saw the temp drop 20 deg F...he said that that's normal. His explanation was that the vehicle has a large interior and that we should run the system on 'recirculate' all the time...shucks on that...I'm not highly impressed...(this is an 05)

It kinda makes sense. The Matrix is basically a Corolla with a huge cabin. There is so much space I took a trip last summer with a lot of 100+ temps and the windows never fogged up on recirc. I guess there is enough space to hold the moisture. The interesting thing was that I was bringing back a small fan I bought to help with the heat in a cabin where I was staying for part of the trip. I put the fan on the floor in front of the passenger's seat blowing straight up. The combination of more air movement and pulling up the cooler air near the floor mitigated the need to use recirc. A bigger A/C unit to offset the cabin size would be nice too.

Pat

Hell I can freeze people out of my 93 Corolla and it hasn't been charged since 1999 at least. Still R-12. Did have to replace the fan switch once.

Charles of Kankakee

Yes...I have a 2000 Corolla and I can do the same...had a 92 Dodge Dakota 4x4 truck a couple years ago and it was so cold that you couldn't hold your fingers stuck into the outlets for more than a few minutes. The cold would make your fingers pain.

A properly charged A/C should work like that. My sister had a problem with her 95 since the R-134a leaked out, but it's working properly since it was recharged. We had the same problem with the 95 Previa, but we had to get it charged twice. They didn't put enough R-134a in for the back cooling loop. It works properly now.

Charles of Kankakee

An air conditioner is also a dehumidifier. You'll have a hard time fogging up the INSIDE of the car with the air conditioner on. I normally turn on the air conditioner to defog my car. What you can do is get the glass so cold that you condense moisture on the outside of the glass, but that's never a problem while you are driving, only when parked.

Why the fear of recirculating air? Do your passengers have really bad BO or something?

You get colder dryer air while using less gas if you use the recirculate. I personally like the half recirculate/half outside air option that older Toyotas have. I normally leave my car in this position most of the time.

In a car with a smaller cabin, it's easy to fog up the windows in recirc. In my old Paseo, if I forgot and left it on recirc, the windows would start to fog up in ten minutes. Exhaling puts more moisture into the air than the A/C can take out. The air is definitely not dryer in recirc. In fact, the moisture can cause problems with mold and mildew.

Without the AC on this happens to all cars.

You had a drain plugged or some sort of water leak in your system then. A properly functioning AC system removes water the air and drains it onto the ground. The water is not recirculated back into the cabin air. The reason I normally leave my air position on half inside and half outside air is because my car (Corolla) gets too dry with it set on the inside air only position.