Air Con

[RustyZ3Fan]

My aircon stopped working several years ago. My garage said there was a leak, I would have to replace all the tubing and it would cost £2,000+. So I decided to live without it.

But was this poor advice? I've searched the forum and can see air con leaks can be detected and it might not be the tubing that is leaking.

 

[bombur]

Mine were the o rings, and an air con guy fixed it for under £100.

 

[Pond]

It is very very unlikely that all your hoses are leaking. The most common places for car a/c systems to leak are (in order of likelihood):
1. compressor drive pulley shaft seal. These leak when the a/c isn't used enough and dry out. They often seal themselves when the system is recharged and running again.
2. O-ring seals on the hose unions. It is usually only one which fails certainly not all at once.
3. condenser splitting or being damaged by stones etc from the road.
4. hoses rubbing and wearing through. This is unlikely these days, as the plumbing is well routed on cars (they learned their lessons from years ago when it used to happen a lot).

I used to repair car a/c systems in the 1990s and had to renew hoses on 1 and 2 year old cars (Rover 800s were the worst) because they had rubbed through. I used to make the hoses up on site unless they were very complicated solid ones.

Leaks can come from elsewhere but they are very uncommon.

 

[Andyboy]

I recently resurrected a 1998 Compact which is the same system. It had no gas at all and wouldn't take a charge until the second attempt when a lot more oil was added. Then it worked for about four months. It was gassed again and worked. No obvious signs of leaks and it held a vacuum for an hour. There is a small leak somewhere but it's rarely an expensive fix.

 

[RustyZ3Fan]

It is very very unlikely that all your hoses are leaking. The most common places for car a/c systems to leak are (in order of likelihood):
1. compressor drive pulley shaft seal. These leak when the a/c isn't used enough and dry out. They often seal themselves when the system is recharged and running again.
2. O-ring seals on the hose unions. It is usually only one which fails certainly not all at once.
3. condenser splitting or being damaged by stones etc from the road.
4. hoses rubbing and wearing through. This is unlikely these days, as the plumbing is well routed on cars (they learned their lessons from years ago when it used to happen a lot).

I used to repair car a/c systems in the 1990s and had to renew hoses on 1 and 2 year old cars (Rover 800s were the worst) because they had rubbed through. I used to make the hoses up on site unless they were very complicated solid ones.

Leaks can come from elsewhere but they are very uncommon.

Fantastically informative - thank you very much!

Looking back, the question I failed to ask was: where is it leaking? I suspect they didn't try to identify the leak, just tried to regas it and found it wasn't working.

 

[bombur]

If you use a uv torch you may be able to see where it is leaking.

 

[Zephyr]

Fill with UV ac oil, turn on, use UV glasses/torch to see where is the issue. Since it it empty for years a uv refill is probably the best thing to do.