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AC issues

Posted: Thu May 16, 2024 9:10 pm
by Joey818
Greetings,

Stats as follows:
2017 Honda accord LX sedan 2.4L 4 cylinder
R134a refrigerant

As part of my early morning winter routine i go start my car turn on the heater walk back inside my house and quickly do little activities and get my lunch bag before I go back to my car and start my day, the car is warm enough that i turn off the heater and go along with my day, well one day I took longer than I usually do and came back to a scorching hot car. I turn on the AC to cool it back down. I noticed i wasn't getting cold air. Last week I had time so I went and bought me a can of r134 A. Took out the manifold gauges and verified that indeed it needed refrigerant. Did a quick visual to see if any leaks were present and did not noticed any. Started the AC waited for about 15 minutes and noticed that the clutch wasn't engaging. So i jumped it via the relay pins at the fuse box. Filled it up. Took about 90 percent of the 12 oz can. My ac worked for a couple of days. Now it's back at blowing just air. Clutch won't engage. With the car off If I give the mg clutch power with a 12v battery via the relay pins it engages. With the car on If I jump it using a jumper wire via the relay pins the car turns off. I checked the fuses both under the hood and under dash fuses, both 7.5 a are good. I checked the relay and it's good, I replaced it anyways because I damage it when taking out, squeezed to hard and broke the enclosure. Anyways. I threw the towel in and booked an appointment for next Friday. But I haven't been able to sleep thinking what maybe the issue. Plus I want to be prepared next week as I'm not trying to go through the process of "changing parts and see of that fixes it" method of diagnosis. I been through that before. Not fun. Both times I could of avoided it if I would of done some critical thinking but figured that's what I pay for to not think and worry about diagnosing myself and letting the pros fix the issue. At this point, I'm not going to have time to fix it but still want to prepare myself when I get the call from the shop telling me that such and such needs to be replaced.

Any feedback is appreciated.

Oh.. if anyone lives in los angeles california , san fernando valley area and can refer me to a shop that is reliable and can help me with this issue. Shoot me their info. I'm through dealer shops and don't really have a go to mechanic. This one shop i used a couple of times and they been just ok.

Re: AC issues

Posted: Fri May 17, 2024 3:53 am
by JohnHere
Seems to me the refrigerant continues to leak out, shutting down the compressor. I don't think heating-up the car had anything to do with it.

Hopefully, there was no sealer in the refrigerant can you put in. Sealer can destroy a system right quick.

I suggest not jumping the clutch to force-engage the compressor because along with low refrigerant, which is probably why the compressor doesn't run (the system is doing its job by shutting down, protecting the compressor), you also have low oil flow. And without normal lubrication, it won't be long before the compressor destroys itself internally.

Also, you can't measure the amount of refrigerant in a system by pressures.

Go ahead and have the shop look it over, find the leaks (there might be more than one), change the desiccant bag in the receiver/dryer, and evacuate/recharge the system.

How many miles has this car logged?