Car climate control sometimes starts on recirculated air?

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Fred99

13684 posts

Uber Geek

#1449324 12-Dec-2015 19:15

mdooher:
Fred99: Yay - got the AC re-gassed in my '88 Safari today. I thought it might have been borked as the AC compressor clutch didn't seem to be engaging, but the tech informed me that it might have an electrical cut-out pressure switch so the compressor can't run dry - so may just work when it had been re-gassed - and it did. $120 well spent. Their system checks for leaks, so hopefully good for another few years.
A/C in cars ain't what it used to be. Pre Montreal Protocol when they gassed them with CFCs and people cared less about fuel economy - those were the days. I had Falcon/Fairmonts in Aus that would pump cloudy streams of ice-cold freezing vapour from the vents like a blast-freezer - phenomenally good on 40 deg C days, and very fast cooling down the car left parked in the sun at midday. Since the late '80s, A/C was not the same in any new cars I've had.

In 1989 I had a Mazda 626 Capella jap import .It had a vent under the steering wheel that when opened on full cold wearing shorts resulted in instantaneous hypothermia. It was f__king awesome.

OFGS - you'd need to be careful about frostbitten body parts if you were wearing shorts.
One of the falcons I had, on a stinker of a +30 C / 90% humidity Sydney day, if you put the a/c on full directed to the windscreen, it'd start forming ice on the outside.

Jeeves

301 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1450080 14-Dec-2015 12:00

Fred99: Yay - got the AC re-gassed in my '88 Safari today. I thought it might have been borked as the AC compressor clutch didn't seem to be engaging, but the tech informed me that it might have an electrical cut-out pressure switch so the compressor can't run dry - so may just work when it had been re-gassed - and it did. $120 well spent. Their system checks for leaks, so hopefully good for another few years.
A/C in cars ain't what it used to be. Pre Montreal Protocol when they gassed them with CFCs and people cared less about fuel economy - those were the days. I had Falcon/Fairmonts in Aus that would pump cloudy streams of ice-cold freezing vapour from the vents like a blast-freezer - phenomenally good on 40 deg C days, and very fast cooling down the car left parked in the sun at midday. Since the late '80s, A/C was not the same in any new cars I've had.

Would have thought he would have had to modify your AC system a little to take newer HCFC refridgerents such as R134a or whatever it is they use now that R22 is long banned.

Fred99

13684 posts

Uber Geek

#1450106 14-Dec-2015 13:10

Jeeves:
Fred99: Yay - got the AC re-gassed in my '88 Safari today. I thought it might have been borked as the AC compressor clutch didn't seem to be engaging, but the tech informed me that it might have an electrical cut-out pressure switch so the compressor can't run dry - so may just work when it had been re-gassed - and it did. $120 well spent. Their system checks for leaks, so hopefully good for another few years.
A/C in cars ain't what it used to be. Pre Montreal Protocol when they gassed them with CFCs and people cared less about fuel economy - those were the days. I had Falcon/Fairmonts in Aus that would pump cloudy streams of ice-cold freezing vapour from the vents like a blast-freezer - phenomenally good on 40 deg C days, and very fast cooling down the car left parked in the sun at midday. Since the late '80s, A/C was not the same in any new cars I've had.

Would have thought he would have had to modify your AC system a little to take newer HCFC refridgerents such as R134a or whatever it is they use now that R22 is long banned.

The old Safari had already been changed over to R134a when I bought it (in 1999) with a sticker placed on the firewall. I'm not sure - but perhaps this was a requirement when they were imported? Was imported ex Japan in about 1995.
This is the second time I've had it regassed. The tech who worked on it assured me that it was ok, regassing interval 3-7 years or so is pretty normal.
It's working fine now. When the compressor clutch wasn't engaging I had a fear it was borked, and may have not been worth fixing. That did bother me a bit, as on a long trip towing a couple of tonnes of boat the transmission tunnel and floorpan over the exhaust eventually gets hot, plus it's black with wind-down windows and I can't reach the passenger side winder from the driver's seat. No chance of the climate control automatically reverting to recirc on startup though. :-)

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