Air Con Problem

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Manchester
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I've just re-gassed my vauxhall Omega using a kit from Halfords. Followed the instructions (quite easy really) and it seems to be full and pressurised. The problem is, the air con still doesn't blow cold. It blows but the air is not chilled.

Can anyone advise? I don't want to take it to a garage and get ripped off. I would rather find the fault first so if I have to use a garage I know what they should be charging me.

Thanks in advance for your advice.
 
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austin1 said:
I don't want to take it to a garage and get ripped off.
Dont then. Take it to an air con specialist, like you should have done to start with, and pay their reasonable fee for diagnosis and repair. That gas you put in might not even be the right type. The pressure might have been OK to start with, and by over-filling, you could damage the compressor and other parts.
 
What a ridiculous reply! Why shouldn't I re-gass and attempt to repair my own car to save money. You are clearly making an assumption that it is outside my range of responses. I am a professional mechanical engineer seeking a bit a sound advice from anyone who might be able to offer it. Do you really take everything you own that ever breaks to a so called specialist to repair - I bet you don't!

I've re-gassed pressure checked used R134a as reccommended. All of this is perfectly logical and something a so-called specialist would probably do.
 
austin1 said:
What a ridiculous reply!
IMHO it was actually a reasonable reply to this ridiculous post:

austin1 said:
I don't want to take it to a garage and get ripped off.
So - in what way do you consider it reasonable and acceptable to come onto a specialist forum and label all garages as 'rip-off'ers?

And here we go again:

...something a so-called specialist would probably do.
How many car owners are "professional mechanical engineers"? An overwhelming minority - that's how many. :rolleyes:
 
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austin1 said:
something a so-called specialist would probably do.
the specialist extract all of the coolent in the system weigh it check it etc an put back in exactly what should be there, they dont use aerosols, thats not to say I'm against having a go yourself, Im not! but i would only use a aircon refill kit on a car that not worth getting repaired properly (ie i would use one on mine lol)

did you use a refill with a pressure gauge to give some indication of how the system is running? what was it reading, and whats it reading now? -if not using a guage then you are working blind. but i suspect it may well be air con specialist time (i wouldnt take it too a garage, specialist should be cheaper)

http://www.id-usa.com/how_to_videos.asp -might be usefull
 
Are you shawahh? All me mates what have aircon crow about it all year round - cool in the summer and demisting in the winter. :rolleyes:
 
austin1 said:
The problem is, the air con still doesn't blow cold. It blows but the air is not chilled.
Thats what happen to my son Vauxhall Astra
Can anyone advise? I don't want to take it to a garage and get ripped off. I would rather find the fault first so if I have to use a garage I know what they should be charging me.
Kwik-fit charged £40 for the full service.
 
masona said:
Kwik-fit charged £40 for the full service.

That seems very cheap - do you know what they did for that?
 
Apparently our local Kwik-fit started offering to do air-con service, I don't know if it's the same elsewhere, they hooked it up on the machine, I believe they flushed it out and renew with new gas unless they just top it up I don't know but my son's very pleased with it so far.
 
austin1 said:
I've just re-gassed my vauxhall Omega using a kit from Halfords. Followed the instructions (quite easy really) and it seems to be full and pressurised. The problem is, the air con still doesn't blow cold. It blows but the air is not chilled.

Can anyone advise? I don't want to take it to a garage and get ripped off. I would rather find the fault first so if I have to use a garage I know what they should be charging me.

Thanks in advance for your advice.

£70/80 from a a/c specialist gets you the gas vached out pressure test, electrical diagnostic & if all is well a regass ........ Now if there is somthing else wrong...... "Here we go" Open your wallet & say help yourself :( ......... If I was you I'd run it in to ya Vauxhall dealers & see what they have to say ...... We could go down the road of is the compressor kickking in when the AC is turned on .......... Does the EMU throw up AC fault codes....But we would be urinating in to the wind .......[/i]
 
You might be anyway - austin1 hasn't posted recently...
 
Softus said:
You might be anyway - austin1 hasn't posted recently...

bear in mind there are two worlds - Our world, where everyone assumes you are dead if you don't post for three hours, and the real world. It is possible the OP lives in the latter.....


My Rover 600 used to do exactly the same as described above, so I took it to the garage* where they said they would perform an 'air conditioning integrity test'. When I returned, this actually involved regassing the system and then seeing if it all disappeared within half an hour (which it did) because more or less every seal in the whole system had crumbled to dust, and then charging me 80 quid for it. In the circumstances, the options were to pay hundreds of pounds to have the system repaired, or to drive with the window open.




*Local Honda garage, where I would get charged a non-Honda parts sourcing supplement or something like that, every time, leading to me having a debate about whether I should, every time, given that the Rover 600 and the Honda Accord are exactly the same car and use exactly the same parts.
 
johnny_t said:
bear in mind there are two worlds - Our world, where everyone assumes you are dead if you don't post for three hours, and the real world. It is possible the OP lives in the latter.....
I take your point, but it doesn't really apply to me, since I'm also in the latter.

My frame of reference was actually in a third type of world, that being the OPs' world - you may have noticed that some people bump their own topics if they haven't had a reply to their problem within 45 minutes. Others, of a similar ilk (being one wherein people believe that they have a right to expect everyone else on the forum to do all the work for them, and to be psychic) get stroppy when we don't deliver, or when their integrity is checked, or when they're criticised for such phrases as "get ripped off".

I believe austin1 to be in the third world. He might come back for some more 'advice', but I doubt that, wherever he is, it's in the real world.


*Local Honda garage, where I would get charged a non-Honda parts sourcing supplement or something like that, every time, leading to me having a debate about whether I should, every time, given that the Rover 600 and the Honda Accord are exactly the same car and use exactly the same parts.
I've heard that Honda/Rover isn't the only combination that leads to this type of charge; the reasoning I've heard, which makes commercial sense (if not a marketing sense), is that one of the brands is cheaper to buy, therefore there is a premium to pay either in length of warranty, or cost of parts (or servicing), even though the parts are identical.

Obviously this is going to annoy customers, which is the flaw in the whole approach, but the UK car industry is not famous for its ability to work out how to make an honest buck.
 
^neo^ said:
It'll soon be winter, you won't need aircon :LOL:
you should run it for 10 mins each week to keep it lubricated! otherwise come the first hot day next year when you flying down the motoway you turn it on the compressor kicks in and at all goes pop (or something similer).
 
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