[Mic]

Hi I own an EL XR6 that has recently had the aircon regassed and was all working fine for a while. Now however the aircon seems to have stopped working and does not blow any cold air (turning the aircon ON does not seem to make any difference to the temperature of the air coming out from the vents). Has anyone else had a similar problem? Any ideas would be good, thanks

 

[johnsxr6]

you have a leak dear liza!
either the filter, canistor, or condensor- the latter (condensor) is a complete dash removal to replace, if you do it your self you will save a bundle of $$$, but try to get a free quote to find out the problem, then do it yourself.
The problem with air cond places is that they will tell you its all f...k..d and slug you for all you got, and a regas on top of that. Be carefull on were you go!

 

[Dellboy999]

Check the canister first, its usually at the very front of the car, it has a small glass viewing window in it, can you see a bubble in it at all. another test is there will also be a what looks alot like a bike valve there also, if you want you can give a quick short press down on it, and see if gas sprays out, if it dead quiet you know you are 100% out of gas.

Jason

 

[Mic]

Yeah i had a look at the valve (the one with the lid with the "L" on it) and it sprayed gas out so I think there is lots of gas still in the aircon. I will take a look at the canister next, thanks.

 

[TaraHymen]

u wont find the canister(it's called a receiver dryer) cos it's behind the front bumper on an EL and it's a bumper removal to replace. doesnt matter anyway cos the EL's dont have a sightglass anyway.

johnsxr6: u've got the condensor mixed up with the evaporator. the condensor ir in front of the radiator and the evap is inside the car and yep it's a prick(dash removal) to get to.

this is my biased opinion from the point of view of the air con mechanic. there are approx 25 places an air con can leak it's gas from so a system may in fact have more than one leak but only the worst one will show up on initial inspection. thats if it does show up at all. like i said before there are plenty of places that arent even accessible let alone visible to be checked for leaks.

90% of the time an air con fails is cos it loses it's gas. it sounds like u've lost u'r gas again. if they serviced it properly then they would have added a leak-detector dye to the system making the leak "easier"(i didnt say easy) to spot.

an air con system will fail to operate properly once it has lost 10% of it's total volume of gas so unless u can tell the difference between 120psi and 10psi by poking something down the valves in the charge points that isnt a good indication of whether it has gas or not.

when u turn u'r air con on, does the little light in the switch turn on? does the air con compressor "click" and cut in? if both are working, then yep u've got a leak.

hope that helps.

Norm

 

[johnsxr6]

TaraHyman, Sorry about that, you are correct with your locations, and I have had to many late nights over X-mas and new years, but you get the point anyway LOL

 

[Mic]

Yeah the light does come on and the compressor clutch does enagage . Guess it will need to be re-gassed again, it just seems funny that the aircon does not make any difference at all (would you expect it to make a little difference instead of none at all if it had leaked gas?)

 

[johnsxr6]

You are without fail out of gas my friend, fill it up, for around $50 and if it last this summer, your laughing, even if you payed $50 each summer, its a bargain!

 

[TaraHymen]

hey johnsxr6, no need to apologise. we're all here to learn and only some of us were lucky enough to have several late nights over xmas and new years.

 

[smccask]

The ef/el system has a low pressure switch located beneath where the LP and HP lines pass through the firewall. When gas gets too low, this switch energises and disables the compressor clutch, hence you go from cold to nothing over night. You can remove your inlet ducting and get to this LP switch connector, short it out and then the air con will come on. Only do this though to ensure that the air con sytem works, but is simply low on gas, do not run it out of gas