Hey, it's the first actually warm day and to my luck my A/C has apparently gone somewhat south... Anyways, it's fairly warm, but it's still slightly colder than regular 'cold' airflow. Anyways, I figure it's either a leak somewhere, the coolant chemical (can't remember the name), or one of the other parts is shot. All of the other components to the ventilation system work fine, it blows high and low and heat is fine, just the AC is crap.

Has anyone had this problem? Does anyone know a relatively easy fix or ways of inspecting?

Thanks!

 

Sadly it sounds like a leak. A/C is usually expensive and not easy to fix by yourself unless you know what to do and have the proper cert. to repair automotive a/c systems. I paid over 400 dollars last summer to fix my girlfriends 93 accord and that was just parts, I did all the labor since I'm a technician. Let's see those parts were like 300 for an evaporator/expansion valve, and about 100 for R12. That was for a leaking evaporator. Just one part and it adds up. You need someone to tell you what's wrong.

 

That sounds similar to mine. Except one day it was SUPER COLD AC and the very next day, like overnight, the AC was blowing warm. Unless I had a major leak I wonder why mine has done that. Maybe I blew something when installing my stereo that day...

 

Strangely enough, that's when mine crapped out too... I gutted my interior to paint and do the stereo, and after that the AC was warm. It was really wierd... I never thought it would be attributed to the stereo... maybe it's just a fluke....

 

It's always possible you pulled a wire apart somewhere under the dash...

Lots of times when the AC 'suddenly' quits working, it's been leaking for a while. One day it 'suddenly' doesn't have enough pressure for the low-pressure switch. That switch is in there so you don't destroy your compressor by running it anyway.

 

Wow, I'm surprised you were even able to get any R-12 refrigerant. Why did you just do an R-134a conversion since you were in there? Wouldn't that be cheaper in the long run?

 

just take the a/c out of there and gain some hp plus they weigh almost 20 lbs

 

^^^^anyone else reading this? He has a good point which I didn't bring up. And he is also right, I should have converted to R134a and in the long run it would have been cheaper. With mine I was concerned about the age of the car and it's a/c componants. I was concerned the compressor wouldn't be able to take the extra stress of conversion. (R134a systems have slightly higher pressures). Nobody will convert your system to R134a and tell you that it will be a guarenteed success and that your compressor won't blow in 2 months. I think chances are it would have been fine but this is my car and i'm wierd that way. Accords seem to convert easily between R12 and R134a without problems, however I would recommend not to do it to a civic with a half condensor/half rad. I have never seen good results from the ones i did it to and i ended up converting them back. The high side pressure always spikes way to high and cooling in the cabin is weak. Around 45-50 f degees.

To comment on the R12, Ebay is a good source of old R12, I found it at places like PEP boys, kragens, napa, etc... Here's the catch, you have to have a lic. to buy it.
It's called a section 609 and it's easy to get. Do a seach if you're interested. Every year the price goes up. Get it why you can I guess.

 

OK, potentially noob question...... what's the difference between R12 and R134a? (anything to do with the difference in 96-98, 99-00 vent systems?) what would the benefits be to doing a convert, and can one be done on a 97 civic (assuming it involves more than just changing the coolant chemical?)

Reminiscing about my AC on the extremely hot drive home today I remembered that before my AC went to crap there were a few times I noticed that when I had it on it looked like dust or even faint smoke was coming out of the vents, it didn't have any scent or anything. AC worked fine while it was doing this, and it did for a summer, by the time the next summer rolled around the AC had crapped out. I thought the stuff was likely dust/dirt from the vents, but who knows...

Anyone heard of this? I just can't stand the thought of paying someone 1K+ to fix this.

 

R12 is a better refrigerant, but it hurts the ozone layer & it's now illegal to manufacture it. Still can be bought & used (with a license), but nobody's supposed to be making any more of it.

A '97 almost certainly came with R134a, so there's no conversion needed. Everybody switched over in the early '90s.

The mist coming out of your vents was probably water vapor. It was probably on a very humid day, right?