[MarkTheShark]

So I just got back from the local Troy garage and am slightly concerned. They said there was pretty much nothing in it but a vacuum test was good. They juiced it up and now it blows nice and cold. £69 Are they possibly funny at troy?. I got the car early march and remember the AC light would come on with the windscreen heating so it must have had some, but where did the refrigerant go if no leaks? I suppose I'll need to get a UV light and check on it.

I swear I cannot just get something fixed and that's it. It has to turn into an episode of csi with the blacklights out.🤣

 

[TT'sRevenge]

With a 2007 it's possible the charge was low without a major leak. That's about a 15 year old vehicle and refrigerant does escape over time even if there is no major leak in the system. That said I'd expect the charge to be low not dead empty but if they checked for leaks and found none, I guess now only time will tell. If it's still good in a year's time, you can be confident of no leaks. If you lose cooling by the end of summer...well that's a different story.

Note that UV light only works if you add UV dye to the system, so if it's just normal refrigerant and no dye in there now, UV light won't tell you anything unfortunately.

 

[MarkTheShark]

They did give the print out from the machine. 5cc of uv dye added.

 

[TT'sRevenge]

They did give the print out from the machine. 5cc of uv dye added.

Ah okay if it's still in there, you could have a look yourself--just get a light and some glasses. See if you can see anything they missed.

 

[darrylmg]

...just get a light and some glasses...

Made me chuckle...
"No, I'm not going to a rave, why would you think that?
Yes, I am sitting in the car with the a/c on, UV glasses and glowsticks!"

 

[John949]

The rotating seal on the compressor will always leak a small amount. Over the years it gets worse. (This is why you should run the AC every month or so to keep this seal lubricated.) How many £60 top-ups can you get for the price of a new compressor? Of course there is the environmental issue of leaking refrigerant into the atmosphere but the effect is tiny compared to other sources of global warming.

 

[Rufflesj]

The rotating seal on the compressor will always leak a small amount. Over the years it gets worse. (This is why you should run the AC every month or so to keep this seal lubricated.) How many £60 top-ups can you get for the price of a new compressor? Of course there is the environmental issue of leaking refrigerant into the atmosphere but the effect is tiny compared to other sources of government backed corporate theft.

Fixed that for you

 

[MarkTheShark]

I was wondering, is there anything you could read in odbeleven to check levels/ pressure drop over time?

looking through the available channels for aircon system nothing is labelled.

 

[MarkTheShark]

Well one week later and it's blowing warm again. so it clearly does have a leak somewhere and Troy misinformed me.

 

[SwissJetPilot]

You might want to follow this thread in case you both have the same issue -

Air-conditioner / HVAC Live data from OBDeleven

Block 1 value 4 should be the refrigerant pressure (high side). 7 bars (105 psi) seems a bit high with the engine off - I would expect about half that unless the car was really hot. I wonder if OBD11 gets the scaling of these values right? The value is sent as two bytes of data and you have...

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