Air Con Help Anyone?

Rob-Halifax · June 22, 2013

Well, it's been a hot sticky week up here in Gods own country (that's Yorkshire just in case you didn't know), I decided to go and get the old girl gassed up today having already carried out the self diagnostic because my aircon light flashes when I turn it on.(thx for the info Tigerfish) and it coming back with 00 (I understood this to mean that it probably just needed gassing.

Well, I was wrong, took it to a very good place who would you believe will check and gas any car for only £30 - Bargain.

They have a machine, you just attach the High and Low pressure hoses and off it goes, it checks to see if the system has anything in it still (mine actually did but it turned out to be just a little bit of lubricant, no gas), then it will completely vacume the system for a full 7 mins, then you wait 5 mins or so to see if the vacume remains a total vacume, if not, the system has a leak, mine stayed at absolut zero - no leaks. Then it adds lubricant (in my case, 2ml) and then it adds the gas (in my case 800ml), then it measures the pressure and compares it againsed the data it holds to say what it should be. Bobs your uncle, mine was bang on - looking good.

The nice man said start your engine and turn the aircon on, the temp to the lowest.. . . . . . . aircon light still flashing he said, rev at 2000 and keep it there a couple of mins, aircon light still flashing and the air coming out is not cold.

He sicks his head under the bonnet again and said AHA!, I know why, your pump is not working, look, it's not turning round at all. He then explained that until it was gassed, the pump would not have switched on anyways so it's not a total waste of your £30.

He told me I would need to get the pump sorted out for it to work but if the gas came out during the repair process, he will re gas it for free, what a nice man.

Well, I have another gs as a donor for parts and it's aircon is working fine, all I need now is to get it off the donor and fit it to mine.

I realise that this is probably gonna be another Tigerfish question but just in case, does anyone have a detailed instruction on how to remove and replace the aircon pump? I guess I may as well do the aux belt at the same time since i'm in there and probably gonna have to remove the belt to get the pump off (that's a down right guess), seen your tutorial for the belt Rick, first class as usuall.

Cheers

Rob

steve2006 · June 23, 2013

Firstly the gas will escape when replacing the compressor/(pump) as you have to remove the pipes to it.

it is illegal to deliberately allow the gas to escape to the atmosphere from any AC system, it cannot simply be vented into the atmosphere it has to be removed before starting any work on the system.

The AC "specialist" to whom you took the car should be fully aware of this and should not have said what he did.

The correct method is to have the gas correctly removed/recovered from the system, then replace the compressor and then have the system refilled.

To the problem in hand, the compressor unit is driven by the serpentine belt,pulley and clutch system. I would first ensure the clutch which is electrically operated is getting power to it otherwise it will fail to engage drive to the compressor.

If the clutch is the cause of the problem this can be repaired without removing the compressor therefore eliminating the need for degassing the system.

However it may be that the compressor has seized due to lack of pag oil and refrigerent.

Rob-Halifax · June 23, 2013

The procedure for this Steve?

Cheers

steve2006 · June 23, 2013

Googled in 2 minutes, page AC 34 on is where you need to start by checking as I suggested the magnetic clutch.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/41771244/Lexus-GS300-Manual

Muleatron · July 5, 2013

Also a 7 minute vacuum is for from a long enough time. The main point of the vacuum is to eliminate any moisture from the system, the absolute least amount of time for the vacuum is 20 minutes. I usually do it for about 45 minutes