Air con recharge

[monkeyman]

This it a stupid question but does anybody know what temperature the air con should be when turned up to full speed and the temp turned down to LOW. In this recent spell of hot weather weve just had in England Ive been using but even at high rpm and after half and hour its not the ice cold I was expecting it to be. I dont use the air con that often as ive only had the car since November (its an 09) and I know they need recharging every year but mine has only done 4600 miles.

[thorax]

If you want cooler air from the vents, turn the fan speed down a bit. This will give the heat exchanger a greater chance of removing more heat from the incoming air. With the hot weather at the moment I switch on recirculate once the a/c has been working for a few minutes. I find this reduces the inside temp that little extra. No point doing this once outside temp drops below say 20deg C.

[monkeyman]

On the climate control unit there are the 3 buttons that control the air flow and then the 1 next to it which does the recirculating but cant remember how many times to press it to get it to recirculate mode.

[Dogzyboy]

I'm having a similar issue with mine. Pretty sure my AC isn't working so I'm going to book it in to get looked at.

[johanvs]

I had mine in for service for another issue. When I got it back they said they had also replaced fluid in AC because of an error message when connecting to the error log. It showed an error with AC.

[monkeyman]

It might just be the extream temperatures.When it was super hot in London at the start of this week, the trip computer on the bus I was driving got up to 37 degrees at its highest temp, and the air con fitted to it was realy struggling to cope at that temp. So it think its just the extreamly high temp as I can freeze my arse off at night with the air con up full.

[Deacon]

The AC isn't great on mine either especially compared to my last car but I just figured it's one of those things - some of the cars I've owned have had great AC and some have been a bit rubbish - the 'roc is somewhere in the middle!

Deacon

[ashley1407]

Hmm I think you may need to get it checked out. If you don't get that 'stiff nipple' feeling it's not doing the job!

[monkeyman]

Thats what im thinking but i was using it earlyer today and it was rather cold on LOW, just off max fan and on recirculate so I may wait a while till people start doing offers on air con recharging. Unless there are any dealers/garages doing cheap recharging at the moment.

[infinidim]

I have managed to beat our A/C into submission now.

At the beginning of the week when it was very hot the fan / AC was working so hard on Auto that you could hear yourself speak!!

What I did was switch it off Auto and set all the options myself and now it seems to be working really well.

Hope this help...

Infinidim

[matsa71]

Just a quick Q on this,
You're talking about recharging ACs on cars that can't be more than 2 years old
I don't get this, I've never rechararged ACs on my cars and I usually keep them until they are about 5 years old.
Is this a general thing that I should expect on my MY2009? (working just fine so far)
/M

[maddogdave]

I've had two cars with A/C and haven't needed a recharge. I had each of the cars for 4 years. But the G/F's Fiesta has just needed a recharge after just under 4 years. The symptoms were the compressor clicking in and out every 10 seconds on so when stopped in traffic and very little cooling. £50 at Kwik Fit and they found no other problems or leaks and the A/C works fine now. Most other independant garages would probably do it for a similar price. I've always used my A/C at least once a week for 10-15 mins to keep it healthy. The refrigerant also acts as a lubricant to the internals of the system, so if you don't use the A/C for months and then turn it on and it doesn't work it may be that a seal / gasket has dried out and allowed the refrigerant to escape. So the cheapest option is to make sure you use it regularly and you shouldn't have a problem. If it stops working in less than 3 years and you've been using it regularly then I would get the dealer to fix under warranty.

[Dogzyboy]

Got mine booked in with the dealers so will see how that goes. I'll report back when afterwards though its not going in until the week after next.

[Dogzyboy]

Mine was in at VW today to have this looked at & it turns out that all it needed was a re-gas. They checked all the seals & the mechanics & found nothing wrong, so can only assume they forgot to gas it at build stage!?! It certainly seems fine now, so I can only assume that was the problem. I'll be keeping an eye on it for the next while though.

[Simon_T]

Hi not sure if this helps but ive had several cars with A/C and found that running it regular or at least once a week keeps the system flowing nicely well thats what i was told when i took one of my cars in for a recarcharge and the reason why was because it smelt like vanilla ice cream all the time lol.
My 04 Golf gttdi has been faultless with its A/C and its really cold but i must admit i do run it every week regardless of tempretures on the advice i was given.

Hope that helps.

[egobreed]

Vanilla Ice Cream would be great - I find that I get the smell of vinegar coming through the vents when I switch the A/C off! To be fair, that could just be a result of living in Glasgow...

[monkeyman]

Having the air-con refreshed on Wednesday when the car goes back to the dealers. At 25 quid its no love lost if it doesn,t make it any colder but fingers crossed it works.