Oh and just one more thing I wanted to ask...
Being summer and everything i finally got my air conditioning regassed the other week for the first time. It's been empty the whole time i've had the car (19 months now) so I had no idea what state the air con bits are in. I therefore fully expected the gas to piss out all over the air con guy as he was filling it up and get nothing for my £47. It was slightly better than that - it didn't seem to piss out and on the way home i noticed some exciting new behaviour from my car...
The compressor now definately kicked in when you switch it on (or switch off the eco button if you like). I guess there was some pressure switch before telling it not to even bother, but now with some gas it wanted to play? The idle speed goes up to 700 or so too with the compressor on which it never did before. Also - there now seems to be a new range of fan speeds. I was very well used to the sound of fan speeds 1 - 9 before, which the car either chose itself or i could choose for it. Now i seemed to have a super fast fan speed range with the compressor on. Speed 9 with the compressor on was faster and louder than the speed 9 i knew and loved and likewise with the other speeds - maybe there's some other fans that were never used before? With compressor off (or eco on) the fan speeds are in their usual range. There is also a funny noise with the compressor on - a bit like if there were leaves rustling in the ducts but not quite - a bit more electro-mechanical sounding.
I really really wanted to believe it was blasting out some seriously cold air too - but i'm just not sure it was. However much i held my hands in front of the vents and believed they were in an arctic gale (like new car air con systems can achieve) i knew i was fooling myself. I dont think the air was really any colder than it ever was. Perhaps initially but after an hour or so definately not. After about 4 hours the new behavior mentioned above stopped happening too
. And now it's back to just how it was before. I'm assuming that my gas has indeed all pissed out, just not as immediately as i'd thought it might.
The air con place put dye in it so they could identify the leak so i guess that's the next step. I understand it's UV dye. Does anybody know if theres a time limit for which it's detectable. I just cant easily find the time to book it back in for them to tell me where it's leaking from. Do i need to hurry or can i take my time and they'll be able to detect the dye whenever?
To people lucky enough to live with working air con, does i sound like for the short time my system had some gas pressure it was behaving correctly? Might fixing the leak sort it or is it probably a waste of time and money? My concerns are that with all that time empty seals all over the palce may have dried up etc etc. Perhaps this will turn out to be what has casued the leaks? Is the fact that i didn't get the hoped for arctic gale even when it had some pressure in it indicative of deeper problems?
Any advice would be appreciated...
Liam
Author
Topic: Air con problems... (Read 747 times)