Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General Troubleshooting More A/C troubles

This thread is great!
Thanks to all who contributed.
It appears I was having the same problem.

Is it fixed now?

We've driven it a bit over the weekend, but no more than 5-10 minutes or so at a time.
It works awesome. Ice cold. Works like the stupid thing should work, finally.
We'll get a chance to drive it more later in the week, so I'll see how well it does then.

I think we ground down the little shim from about .95mm to around .88mm (was kind of a pain in the ass since it's so small).

An update on my situation. I determined that the problem wasn't the clutch air gap after (1) measuring with a feeler gauge to check the gap (from the top I should add) and (2) starting the a/c and noticing that the clutch would engage briefly and then switch off (low pressure cut off). Obviously (2) is the easier check and would have put me on the right track sooner but I got there in the end.
So, after determining that the clutch was OK I took it in to have the system evacuated and recharged. Voila, beautiful cold air. The cost was $195 for refrigerant and labour. They also added some dye in case there's a leak (fingers crossed).
The other thing that might be of interest here was the low side pressure was under 40psi and high side over 200psi with a vent temperature of 55 or something. Quoting these from memory right now cause I left the service docket at home but I can check these if anyone wants more detail.

Bottom line is I'm a happy camper right now. Just hope I don't have a leak.

Update on mine.
Husband drove it to and from work yesterday. To work - the a/c was ice cold. Going home, it started acting up again.
So last night we took the shim out and put a smaller one in, rather than try to shave it down anymore.

We did a small test drive last night and it seemed to be fine.
His drive to and from work today should be the true test.
fingers crossed!