Air Con not always cold enough?

3 CASE STUDIES WHERE NO COLD AIR WAS NOT DUE TO LACK OF GAS.

Case Study Number 1:

Our customer had a 7 year old Renault Laguna with 60k miles on the clock. He said the air conditioning was sometimes chilly but seemed to vary in temperature during his journey. He had been to a National Chain of car "specialists" who had vacuumed then recharged his A/C system with refrigerant gas. This hadn't fixed the problem and when he returned to them for further help they didn't know what to say. So he turned to someone who knows what they are doing and our diagnosis was a blocked orifice valve. These typically cost about £10 and are usually simple to change although the refrigerant needs to be recovered first and refilled afterwards. The photo below shows the old and new valves for comparison. After changing the valve the customer was happy to report that his A/C was nice and cold again all the time.

Case Study Number 2:

In our next case study the customer had taken his wife's Volkswagen Golf to the same National Chain mentioned above as it wasn't blowing cold enough. We're not sure exactly what happened but we believe they had tried adding more and more refrigerant to get the air conditioning to blow colder. Every vehicle has a set weight of R134A refrigerant gas that the system should be charged with. If you use any more or any less then it will not work efficiently and adding too much refrigerant can actually cause compressor failure. In this case we recovered over one kilogram of gas before charging it with the correct amount which was about half the weight recovered. The customer (and more importantly his wife) were over the moon with the result.

Case Study Number 3:

A gentleman with a modern BMW called complaining that his air conditioning seemed to work when he was travelling at speed but he was suffering when stuck in traffic around town. A quick check showed that the pressure and temperature on the high pressure side of the system were both getting much too high and this was due to the fan behind the condenser / radiator not working. The condenser needs air to flow through it for cooling and at low road speeds the fan does this job while at higher speeds the natural airflow suffices. Replacing the faulty fan corrected the problem.

If you have a problem that sounds similar to those above then please get in touch and we will happily diagnose the fault for you.

Vehicle Specific Information

• Porsche Condensers

• Qashqai J11 / X-Trail T32

• Renault Trafic 3 / Vivaro B

Tips and Advice

• Changing Porsche Condensers

• Leaking Condensers

• Checking the A/C on a car you're buying

• Don't suffocate your A/C system!

• How to change a pollen filter

• How to stop those steamy windows

• A/C not cold enough - 3 case studies

Testimonials

"My Freelander's air conditioning hadn't worked for a couple of years. I thought it was a major costly job to resolve so never tried to repair it. After seeing an advert for Mr Cool I decided to call him in. Turns out it just needed re-gassing! Mr Cool sorted it very proficiently and professionally and my air con has worked ever since. I would not hesitate in recommending Mr Cool to anyone." - Graham Turner, Ashbourne.

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