AC Troubleshooting Help

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aspman
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Joined: Fri Apr 13, 2012 5:48 pm

AC Troubleshooting Help

Post by aspman »

Hey guys, I was hoping to pick your brains for a moment on a cooling system gremlin that is dogging me. A few weeks ago I had my Freon recharged, dryer replaced, and refrigerant manifold line replaced because my front header had melted a 2 inch hole in the old one. I wrapped the replacement line in a few layers of reflective heat tape end to end and hoped for the best. I picked it up from the shop and was enjoying ice cold AC on the ride home, but by the time I got to my house less than 10 mins away I noticed it wasn’t blowing as cold anymore. I popped the hood in front of my house with the engine running fully expecting to see another hole melted in the AC line, but that seemed to be holding up fine. I was looking the line over inch by inch when I noticed the radiator fan wasn’t on. Almost immediately after I noticed that tidbit the radiator drain valve exploded out of the radiator and gave everything under the hood a nice coolant steam bath! :runsies: I was pretty disgusted with it at that point, so I just parked it and drove my truck for a while.

I noticed that the wiring connector to the radiator fan was pretty sketchy, so I went ahead and replaced that. However, when I would start the car and put the AC on the fan wouldn’t kick on like it’s supposed to. So I went ahead and troubleshot the fan motor, the wiring, the relay, etc. Everything checked out fine. Lastly I noticed that when I ground out the A&B terminals on the ALDL connector the fan would kick on, so I decided to take it on a test drive. Sure enough when the temp gauge got near the half way mark the fan kicked on, ran until the gauge went down to the ¼ mark, and then kicked off. That told me the cooling fan circuit is working fine and got me to troubleshooting the AC system.

I quickly found that the wiring connector at the AC compressor clutch was frayed and bare right at the connector. I spliced in a replacement pigtail from the junkyard, and I am reasonably sure the AC compressor clutch is engaging when I turn the AC on. I also verified that the AC clutch relay was in good shape and that the clutch would engage when I would jumper the terminals on the relay.

I still have two problems though: 1) the radiator fan still isn’t kicking on when I turn the AC on, and 2) the AC is only blowing coolish air and not cold like you would expect (and need in this crazy 95+* weather!) I’m getting pretty irritated with the whole thing. :evil: Could a bad AC pressure sensor be the cause of my problems? Or is the next reasonable troubleshooting step to get under the dash and try to figure out what the ECM is doing? I’m not getting any kind of trouble codes, but I’m not sure the OBD1 system on my car even monitors the AC. Would putting the gauges on the high and low side of my AC system provide valuable troubleshooting information? I guess it is possible that there is another leak in my AC system that was missed when they vacuumed and charged my AC at the shop. Throw me your ideas my peeps! :beer:


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Money pit Beretta
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Joined: Thu Jul 26, 2007 11:36 am
Location: Kansas

Re: AC Troubleshooting Help

Post by Money pit Beretta »

Check for continuity on both pressure switches. Yes, check the pressure with the gauges. Vacuum can seal a leak.


keep'em flying!
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