My 96 Accord EX V6 AC sometimes blows warm air & at other times runs great. Two days in a row with same temperatures the ac blew warm the whole trip & the next day it ran great. Any ideas on this? I'm no ac specialist but the symptoms would seem to rule out compressor & freon issues. Thanks.

 

Do you hear you ac compressor kicking on? Ac clutch may have failed ( intermittently ).

 

the best u can do right now is change out the compressor relay (located on the top right side of the driver side radiator fan. get if from a local junk yard and it should help. if not then i'm pretty sure its your ECU.

 

Thanks for the response. Is it likely then that the compressor relay would intermittently fail? I guess that's a surprise to me but perhaps that's common?
Thanks again.

 

the temperature outside makes a huge difference on ur a/c. if u live in a hot place, test ur a/c at night time, if it works fine at night, u probably just need some more freon.
did u notice the temperature outside when it works and when it doesnt work?

 

Outside temp is not a factor here as on the same outing with the temp constant the AC may blow cold awhile & then blow hot for awhile.

 

as far as i can think of. its either one of these three:
ur a/c thermostat
like Fuse said, ur compressor clutch
or ur ECU.

can u hear ur a/c clutch go on and off every now and then?

 

Daughter at college has the car so is hard for me to troubleshoot remotely. I have the Haynes manual - not the Honda manual & Haynes has very little about AC in it.

Where is the AC thermostat located?

As far as the ECU goes, I would think there might be a trouble code set but no "Check engine" light is on.
Thanks.

 

thermostat is located right outside the a/c evaporator core (a/c evaporator core is b/w blower motor and the heater core)
its a little piece i'd say about 3 X 1 X 1/2 inches. it has a 3 wire plug going into it.

oh yeah, another thing is that some times my a/c doesnt work as hard either. some times its super cold and sometimes it barely cools. i'm getting more freon put in pretty soon and i'll see what happens.

last year my a/c went out and it was the ecu that was bad. it didnt even threw a code.

 

# 1 .. it is hardly ever the ECU ,, so i would skip that idea for now ,,

but it could be

a/c clutch GAP too wide .. if it is too wide the coil does not have enough strength to engage the clutch especially when really hot outside .

could be as advised a intermittent failing compressor clutch relay , i have seen it many times

and also as advice it could be the thermostatic switch ,, located in the evaporator

BUT it could also be a # of other things ,,poor connection , high pressure switch, internal fan switch ,it provides the ground path for a/c system etc..etc..

In other words when a/c is inop you need to properly diagnose it before you start replacing parts