• Welcome to the Contour Enthusiasts Group, the best resource for the Ford Contour and Mercury Mystique.

    You can register to join the community.

Air conditioner

I just had a very similar problem, no nothing. Make sure you check the passenger fuse box where all the wires feed into it. Mine had melted one of the fat red wires for power, think it was in a combo connector with another slightly smaller green wire. That wire supplied power to blower and thusly a/c. When looking in scrapyard for another good fusebox and lead, I found a bunch more of them melted too, must be a common thing. Think that wire comes into the bottom of box at the front left corner, there's a mess of wires there, you may have to disconnect several groups to see what's going on. That location is with the fusebox swung back up in its' normal running location. Check the fuses too.
 
average is hard to say.. but I can speak from what I've seen at multiple shops....

about 70-90 to pull a vacuum and hold it.. if it doesn't leak down, then its like $14 a pound for the coolant, IIRC? (2.5lbs total fill for our cars). If it does NOT hold a vacuum, you're SOL and you still pay the $70-90 for the attempt.
 
sorry to bring this up again, but on mine the clutch compressor and everything else is working fine. U can hear the fan/blower and everything but thing is its just not cold..

I know it needs a recharge, but would i need a pump for this too? Or can i just buy the freon and use that myself to refill it. I just dont want to take it to a shop for them to use a vac for nothing then just have them refill it.

I was getting kinda confused because in this thread people were saying to just refill it, or get a vac and pump out the air then refill it.
Which one? Im just trying to find the correct way of doing this. I know everything in the system works its just warm air.. Any input?


I have a friend who said just buy the freon and he can do it, but while searching i was confushed because some are saying u need a pump and the guages and what not and some were saying just refill it?

lastly if i just get the freon how would the person kno how much to refill it w/o guages? would he be doing it just by guestimating or is there a method?

sry for the long winded post i just wanna do it right

thx
 
I think you answered your own question on whether or not you need gauges and the know-how to do it properly by asking how someone would do a fill without gauges.

To answer the first part: You don't "know" that everything works perfectly, because (you said it yourself) it blows warm air. The REASON the coolant leaves the little can and enters the A/C system isn't because there is any pressure in the can forcing it in. it is drawn in SOLELY through VACUUM. If there is no vacuum (ie, there is a leak) then buying all the cans in the world won't help you.
 
and of note im the noobest person probably on here so bear with me plz.

I just read this excerpt from liquids thread:

"Great stuff Steve.
I'm not able to get you thorough info right now, but I can tell you what I recall.
I didn't notice anything that caught my attention while I was servicing it.

The only tool I don't have is a vent thermometer.

The reference pressure I was using came off a chart I have from Interdynamics.

The ambient temp was 87, not sure about humidity - 30-40%?
The interdyn chart said 225-250 @ 85 degrees and 250-270@ 90 deg so I was shooting for about 260 @ idle.
Fan seemed to be functioning properly - not sure if there's a secondary fan, or a high speed, but after charging - when I revved the engine I heard the second fan/high speed kick in.

The problem was at 260 I didn't feel much if any change in the vent temp, that is when I went ahead and added more 134. When I got to 270-275 @ idle the vent temp came down a little, so I called it good - especially since I felt like I might have the pressure too high - plus revving the engine ran the pressure up significantly higher. I also checked the low side pressure which was right in the middle of the "charged" range according to the gauge (35 psi).
If the compressor was cycling it wasn't cycling much - or it's just really quiet.

Drove it for 15-20 min today with the air on (80 deg or so) and all seemed well."


that sounded like my same exact issue/repair.. Now my question is he had all the guages to correctly read it so therefore i would just need to get that guage set and freon and ill be good?
 
I think you answered your own question on whether or not you need gauges and the know-how to do it properly by asking how someone would do a fill without gauges.

To answer the first part: You don't "know" that everything works perfectly, because (you said it yourself) it blows warm air. The REASON the coolant leaves the little can and enters the A/C system isn't because there is any pressure in the can forcing it in. it is drawn in SOLELY through VACUUM. If there is no vacuum (ie, there is a leak) then buying all the cans in the world won't help you.


Ok gotcha... Im going to just take it to autozone and have them take a look... see about the leak.. if there's no leak im goin to just buy the freon, and if theres a leak get it fixed...

Yea as i was typing that and my previous post i realized i answered my own :censored::censored::censored::censored:... thx anway
 
I think you answered your own question on whether or not you need gauges and the know-how to do it properly by asking how someone would do a fill without gauges.

To answer the first part: You don't "know" that everything works perfectly, because (you said it yourself) it blows warm air. The REASON the coolant leaves the little can and enters the A/C system isn't because there is any pressure in the can forcing it in. it is drawn in SOLELY through VACUUM. If there is no vacuum (ie, there is a leak) then buying all the cans in the world won't help you.

The refreigerant isn't "drawn in by a vacuum". The "low" side pressure is around 35 PSIG or 35 pounds higher than ambient air pressure, about the same as your tires. I've never seen tires draw air into themselves to inflate themselves. The pressure is significantly higher than the low side pressure (it depends on the temperature of the can, at 100F the pressure in the can is about 100 PSIG) and that is what forces the refrigerant into the system.
 
Twocontours is right. Can of freon has higher pressure than low side (60-70lbs.?)to help push refrigerant in. There is a pressure differential there between low and high sides but by no means is it a vacuum.
 
Back
Top