Yesterday in a really bad rain storm I noticed that my AC wasn't cold. I looked down and the light was flashing. I turned it off and back on and it started working again. This happened a couple of times. The manual says to take it to a dealer. What are the potential problems I may be having and are any of them fixable by me? I know how to add refrigerant if that is needed. Thanks in advance.
I was always under the impression that a blinking AC light meant that the evaporator at frozen up or something. Perhaps severe humidity from the rainstorm had an affect on that.
It's happened once or twice on my 99 Solara and it's always been fine the next time I drove it.
I used to have a similar thing happen to the A/C on my 1990 Camry DX during heavy rainstorms. IIRC, the A/C controller flashes the light in the pushbutton to indicate a fault of some sort [there may be more than one kind of problem detected] .... in this case, I had just driven through some standing water which splashed up inside the engine compartment and onto the air conditioning components: belt, pulley, clutch, etc. This caused the belt to slip, and the compressor (driven by the belt) slowed down enough [detected by a rotational sensor which the A/C controller monitors] for the controller to complain. As soon as everything dried out, it was fine again.
Not 100% sure, but I suspect this might be what you were observing too.
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