once blew cold, now it doesnt.....about a month ago was the last time i used the a/c it blew cold air..it was a trip from Nor Cal down south and then back....i usually dont use it....i like the roll down the window approach..

anyways....i wanted to use it today as it was over 100 and right from the start it blew hot air...it never got cold and i just shut it down after 5 min of hot air.

what i am looking for is just some ideas for easy fix,quick checks, things i can do from the house before i take it in and give up my left arm to tell me what is wrong and then give up my right leg to pay to have it fixed.

NCA

there really isnt anymore of a discription...throw out some ideas and maybe it will be my hamster running up top and i can think of something.

 

turn it to defrost with the temp at its coolest setting and see if it blows cold. if it does your switch is bad.

Or turn a/c on max , open hood and see if compressor is working. if it is , then it might be bad compressor. if it cycles on and off then it is low on freon and you have a leak somewhere. just a couple of things to look at for now.

 

My wife's explorer stopped getting cold so I recharged it with a RC-134 kit from Wally mart ( or was it K?). Cost about $20 and ten minutes time. Worked great. just about put frost out.

 

thanks...great starting point.....gonna try the defrost in the morn.....as for the "switch" what do you mean....when i put it on "max a/c" that switch...as in if i turn the dial to another setting it is a different "switch"

NCA

 

it is all on the same switch on my truck.max a/c-a/c-fan-vent-heat-def. seperate switch for cool-warm. not sure about your model. more than likely your probably low on freon if you compressor comes on and cycles off pretty soon.

 

another posibility is the low pressure cut out switch located under the hood on the accumulator. without freon guages it is kinda hard to troubleshoot the system. you need to know pressures and temperatures to know what is going on in the system.

if the compressor doesnt come on, you can bypass the low pressure switch by unpluging it and jumping across the terminals with a peice of wire to see if the compressor will work. that could mean 2 things, either the low pressure switch is bad or too low on freon to close contacts in the switch.

if the compressure seems to be working normally then you may be stuck in the heater mode trying to heat the cab and cool it at the same time. then you would have to figure out why it is flowing coolant in the heater core.

Now back to the cooling. if you jump the low pressure switch and it cools good, without icing up and blocking air output then i would say the low pressure switch needs changed. if it cools for a while then air out the vents gets weak then it is icing up the evaporator and you need to check freon charge.

 

Some good advice there on simple things to check. To keep your AC system working properly, run it all the time. Adjust the tempature you want with the cool/heat ****. Let us know how the project come out.