Just noticed that my air conditioner is acting up.

It varies between blowing cold and warm. When it's cold, it's very cold like normal, but now it's occasionally blows warmer without warning. When I fiddle with the thermostat (varying it from cold to warm and then back), it starts blowing cold again.

Stopped at a shop that said that the AC just needs to be recharged w/freon. Does this sound like the problem/fix to you auto jocks?

Please advise. Thanks.

 

It seems like mybe your clutch is out of adjustment. Look at the clutch on the compressor and see if there is a large gap. It should be something like .020" hopefully thats your problem, if not then repost and let us know, what you find.

 

Try this, when your AC stops blowing cold, pull over and check to see if your AC pump/clutch is engaged. I only say this because my truck use to do exactly what you are describing. I'd pull over, pop the hood and sure enough the clutch wasn't engaged. I'd just jiggle the connections by the Accumulator/blower and it would kick right on. So I cleaned and tightend up the connections and all is good now. Hope this helps yah out.

 

Check this plug, I had same the thing on mine, went to put a charge on it and bumped this plug the clutch kicked on, turned out to be loose connection. Hope this helps.

 

Nobody has mentioned it yet.... but those symptoms ALSO describe a system that has a low charge.

That's all that was wrong with mine. I probably have a very slow leak somewhere, but for 6 bucks a can, with a can lasting about a month, I'm not going to bother trying to find the leak until next year.

It's true that it CAN be something else. It also CAN be low on charge.

What happens is the compressor uses up all the available coolant and since it has nothing left to work with, it kicks off for a bit until enough accumulates again to kick back on. Strange that it comes back on when you fiddle with the ****, though. To be honest, it sounds more like an air gap issue because you said that.

 

Try looking through this thread about air gaps to see if anything sounds familiar to your situation:
https://www.ford-trucks.com/forums/5...-problems.html

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Thanks for all the suggestions!

I'll check out the clutch to see if that's the problem. If that's not it, then I'll look into recharging the system.

 

I checked the a/c clutch gap and it's wider than .035" (which is the size of the largest feeler guage that I have), so that is probably the problem, but there isn't much room between the compressor face plate and the radiator. So, I'm not sure that I'll be able to get the shim out in order to reduce the gap.

I'll see if I can get it off on my own but, if it looks like it's going to be too much trouble, I'll just take it to a mechanic to get it done and will give him a copy of SpringerPop's post on the shim fix to make sure he does that before doing an unnecessary recharge.

Thanks again!

 

All who have attempted this fix have found sufficient room exists to pull the plate off, though admittedly, there's not a lot of excess.

However, if you don't feel comfortable attempting this, by all means save yourself the possible grief and let a pro tackle it.

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Well, I tried using a regular 5/16" box end wrench to remove the center bolt in the A/C compressor and couldn't get it to budge, even using the suggested technique of turning the ignition on to lock the clutch in place. I've got long handled 1/2" torque wrench that I can try to use for more leverage, but I'm not sure it'll fit in the space with a 5/16" socket attached to the end of it. If that doesn't work either, I'm just going to take it to the shop to check and top off the freon level and/or to have the shim fix done, whichever is necessary. BTW, for some reason, load times on this site and now really long for me (even with a Comcast cable/Motorola Surfboard wireless connection) and I've lost all of the site graphics and formatting that I use to see. I'm not having this problem on any other BBS type-site that I participate in. Has anyone else experience this site problem recently? If so, is there a fix for it? If not, I won't be logging on very much from now on. It just takes too much time to load pages and post messages the way things are for me now.

 

Well, it seems that you may not need our help, after all.

Bye, now.....

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