Well i for sure know jack shit bout it. Except that once you have to touch it, it usually goes bad. My last car in Taiwan worked for ten years (the aC) and then once it started to go, it was endless problems. Nobody could get it fixed for long. Probably either bad mechanics or bad mechanics.
So i been noticing my 17 year old Acura RSX recently started not getting so cool when it gets to be 34c plus.
So I probably made the first mistake (and i been reading and they say don’t do this) and i went to oreillys (auto parts store) and got a can of R134a and a nozzle thingy and attempted to add some to the aC system thinking maybe it needed a top up after 17 years?
Well apparently you have to attach the hose first to the can of r134 and then let some of it out and then attach the hose to the LOW side of the AC system.
Well I don’t think I did this…and some air may (probably) got into the system). So ? the AC doesnt work in daytime. only in nitetime temps when you can live without it.
So knowing how things can get from bad to worse i been avoiding fixing it. But i did find that the AC condenser fan was not working. so had that replaced for 300 bucks. But the garage near my house at the gas station really is not an AC specialist. So he claimed he put more refrigerant in but. It doesnt work.
I noticed the low pressure side gets very cold. AC works for awhile then blows hot air then when the ice melts gets very cold gain.
So i was messin round with the low pressure hose with a gauge and released a wee bit of pressure and now the low pressure side is very hot, and the AC doesnt work
think i will take it to Firestone service who claim they do AC as well as other stuff and see what they can make of it.
Hopefully dont have to change AC compresser, quoted 300 for the part and 500 labor. Other places 1200 USD or more.
yikes.
hope they can just balance out the system, maybe drain it and completely refill properly.
They should not even sell those little cans of refrigerant because apparently its gotta be an exact amount
too little and it wont work, too much and it will blow the AC compresser !!
I only know that you should never get your car serviced in California. They charge you an arm and three legs and in the end the car doesn’t work much better than before. Luckily Nevada is not that far!
Also, talk to our resident MacGyver @Ducked . He’ll figure out how to fix your car with two paper clips and a can of Guinness.
I’ve worked on cars, rebuilt car engines, worked on carburetors, steering, transmissions… After hearing so many horror stories from others, decided long ago to let the experts deal with the A/C even if I did suspect I knew the problem.
Sorry. British people of my generation don’t do aircon. That’s an effete American thing, like automatic transmission.
When I bought my Ford Sierra DOHC I was told I MUST run the aircon all the time, or the engine would overheat.
Effete Taiwanese thing, thinks I. They’ve been corrupted by The American Dream, but have added their own unique brand of mechanical cluelessness.
Turned out you had to run the aircon all the time, or the engine would overheat. Red face.
Turned out the temperature sensor wasn’t working. Shorted it out (with a paperclip. No beercan required.) so the main fan came on with the ignition and never used the aircon again.
On the Skywing the aircon was demonstrated as working when I bought it but I’ve never used it and now would be scared to, since I dunno if it could damage a system that had lost a lot of its refridgerant.
I have thought of getting it checked out and maybe reinstated, but there;s always some brokeness that takes priority, and I’d have to let a (probably sniggering) Taiwanese mechanic work on my car.
There was a post a longish while ago by an American asking Sulavaca about DIY topping up with refridgerant (DIY like this may be possible in the US, even if inadvisable, but I seriously doubt you’d get the DIY kit in Taiwan).
Can’t find the post from a quick look, but IIRC DONT DO IT was the jist, which echoes what Tommy says above. Lots of kit required to do it properly, and easy to screw it up.
Yeah after i messed with it i read about it. maybe should have been the other way around. And most of the stuff i read was DONT EVER USE THOSE LITTLE CANS OF REFRIGERANT AND TRY TO REPAIR THINGS YOURSELF.
AC repair is like rocket science except if it doesn’t work right it blows your wallet up.
Add too much and the AC compressor goes and so does 800 to 1200 or more of your hard earned.
Thats why a buddy of mine with a similarly old Honda Civic has a busted AC and he sold the car for like a hundred bucks, didn’t even want to bother.
I may have to sell the car to someone in Canada where they have no use for AC 364 days out of the year.
I mean, there are so many things that could be the problem:
aC compressor
Ac radiator thingy
Ac fan
Dryer
the radiator thingy inside the car
ETC ETC, clogged something somewhere
And who the hell knows which hose is supposed to be hot or cold? I read conflicting stuff.
Most say low pressure side shoudl be cold but not ice cold and high pressure side should be warm to hot.
nobody knows if the low pressure side if super hot means what?
im going to take it in to the Firestone AC specialists and see what kind of moon mission this thing is going to be.
yeah SF does just as good except if you want your car stolen Oakland is the right place.
off topic but talking about getting cars stolen the 70 or so cars that were stolen from a Dodge dealership in San Leandro (not too far from oakland) in the recent riot all have trackers, I wonder what is taking the fuzz so long to get em all back?
Well two of those thieves met with a bad end. ONe group went to LA in one of the stolen cars and on way back were captured by fuzz, they had stolen plates from another car and put those on but police are suspicious of all new Dodge cars driven by suspicious looking people, they were probably suspicious looking.
Another guy (latino guy it seems) was driving in Oakland with one of those fancy Chargers types and cops spotted and he made a run with his pregnant GF with him. Cops boxed him in with a few cop cars and he started to RAM the patrol cars (it wasn’t his car he didnt care) . Wrong move because the police opened fire and shot him dead on the spot, his GF was wounded and could have been killed too, along with his unborn child.
Dumb move. But neighbors are mad because the police should not open fire in a residential area they say. A by stander could have been shot. Well Oakland has daily shootings Crims on Crims and most of them are in residential areas , even daytime.
What part of CA do you live in? If it’s Bay Area maybe just go without, seems it never gets that hot there anyways (nothing like Texas).
But then again instead of spending all that money fixing the AC maybe think about either buying a new car, or a used car where the AC works.
I mean from what I know (I’m no mechanic) car AC is mechanically driven by the engine so it could be any number of things… If Mythbusters is still around maybe donate it to them for destruction…
well THAT does solve the problem with the AC (at least for me, not for the robbers they will curse having stolen the car and having to deal with the aC).
well the car is worth maybe 150 bucks. I just spent a heap of money on it for this and that so i need to get my money back by driving the thing.
I will have to do without AC for awhile if its going to be much more expensive like 1k for a compresser.
Thing is we have such varied temps around the bay area. It could be 36c in concord where i live and i drive ten miles to berkeley and its 26c and then another five miles to SF and its 20c. But i move on south and when i get to san mateo its back to 36c. AC is life saving around here when it gets hecka hot.
but yea for last month ive been basically without and when its 36c i find that on the freeway at least if i crank open one window on the passenger side half way down , keeping driver side up (its the freeway) and open the moonroof up an inch the venturi effect from the moonroof draws away most of the heat. And with the AC off but the fan full blast the air from the fan does eventually blow cool. Sort of like sitting in your hot taiwanese living room without AC but with the fan in our face. Works kinda alright in that situ.
OUr weather changes alot. A few days ago round 36c but then it got down to 18c the next few days and back to 34c and today its going to get down to 20c ish or less. Also morning and evenings are 10c cooler then mid day.
Big temp differences due to micro climates round here. the play between ocean and mountain air round here.
I had a photo I took of one of these on a VW Beetle at a Tainan car show, but I can’t find it. Apparently you can still buy them in the US, (probably pricy) or would be feasable DIY. Lots of irritating youtube videos on it.
The evaporative cooling aspect might not be very effective in Taiwan because of the high RH.
There are also cheapo Chinese window-mounted fans, solar-powered, which are supposed to stop it heating up while parked, and don’t work much.
If it’d work on its side (probably not but I dunno for sure) you could install it through a sunshine roof hatch blanking plate, where it wouldn’t be nearly so obtrusive IF your head doesnt have to go there.
Im hoping not to have to reinvent airconditioning. Hoping the firestone AC guys can just balance out my system and make sure it has exactly the right amount of refrigerant (apparently one ounce too much or too little and it conks out) and not cost too much. Otherwise, its going to be sauna weight loss time each time i drive the thing.
Car is worth 100 bucks at a dealership but maybe i can get a sucker to buy it for 2000?? But nah, its got new tires, new brakes, new condenser fan, new spark plugs, new bunch of stuff cost me a grand already. So it has got to soldier on for another 50k miles at least. Thing has 255,000 miles on it now.
IT drives awesome though, regularly drive at 80mph these days (everyone does as the cops don’t want to make themselves too omnipresent these days of BLM riots).
