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today i had the system charged with 134a after installing a new 4 seasons compressor, drier and expansion valve. the good news is that the system took the charge and held it. cold air blew out of the face vents. the bad news is as follows:
1) i am not getting power to the comp. the power wire that disappears into the fender is dead. the ac tech sourced power directly from the battery. i know i have to check any fuses.
2) i may have a bad climate control switch ( the knob just to the right of the radio where you can select low/auto/high/defrost) as the blower would not engage in the "auto" position but did react appropriately on the low/high/defrost settings.
3) i removed the temperature setting and climate control knobs and the face plate to access the rear of the climate control switch to find a thin clear plastic wire (?) broken. what is this? what does it do? i guess i have to salvage another from a donor junkyard car. here's some pictures. the broken wire goes into a harness inside the console next to the cruise control switch
thanks in advance for any input including advice as to what actions to take.
1) i am not getting power to the comp. the power wire that disappears into the fender is dead.
2) i may have a bad climate control switch ( the knob just to the right of the radio where you can select low/auto/high/defrost) as the blower would not engage in the "auto" position but did react appropriately on the low/high/defrost settings.
The compressor should still engage in the low/high/def setting, even if the auto setting doesn't turn on the fans.
As I recall someone in the past had made a real tangle of the climate control wiring. Did you ever get to the bottom of that? It won't be easy to figure this out without knowing exactly what was done.
Post back after checking all four climate control fuses
Doug: thank you for identifying the fiber optic cables. the ac tech had suggested as much. more importantly, i can place this "need to fix" further down on the punch list while i focus on the comp lack of power issue. i did install a new cutout switch and comp harness to eliminate the wiring mess. i will now locate an check the climate control fuses.
i spent some quality time with the service manual late last night and found the ac test operation instructions (see pic below), none of which were followed by the ac tech or myself yesterday. i'll be following them to the letter once i get the power issue resolved. i'll update this thread as it's resolved. ren
Bill: my receipt documented 36 oz of 134a with 9 oz of pag 46 oil. the ac tech did say he got readings from the high/low ports that were within the acceptable range (i don't have the readings) and that aside from the lack of power to the comp, i was good to go with no leaks.
I'm not sure if this will help, but the S57 troubleshooting guide generally does. I attached the AC control schematic. A bit daunting, but the compressor circuit is pretty straight forward. it's the GN wire from the RANCO thermo switch that makes the magic. unless it's an early model that has the thermal limiter (don't know what that is, may car doesn't have it).
Hi Retroren. Once again, you are walking in trodden footprints. I'd second nileseh's diagram. Study this thing carefully. I had many of the same issues with my climate control and was able to fix them. I made six or seven copies of this and marked it up with colored pencil until I understood exactly what happened and where and when power was to go where. Below I link to two threads where I was working on this and in the first is a copy of my colored diagram. You can see exactly where that power from the compressor comes from. Chase it down. You MUST study and UNDERSTAND that diagram though. Each component people tell you to check has very specific failure modes and cause very different symptoms. When my system wouldn't work people suggested all kinds of things and I ran them all down. I learned that the amplifier merely controls the blend doors. If it is bad, your temperature won't change. That's it. If the resistor is bad, there is a specific symptom. And so on and so forth. I extensively troubleshot the Mode control switches. They act in a very specific way. And power flows through that system in a predictable way. Understand that flow and test test test. The system was designed to work. If it isn't working there is a reason. I suspect that what has happened to your system is exactly what just happened. Someone took it to an AC shop when it didn't work, the tech didn't take the time to figure out why it didn't work but did figure a way to bodge it and did. If your car has all the wires shown on the diagram then connect them the way they are supposed to be connected (remove all the bodging) and then figure out why it isn't working. I know from first hand experience that the Mode Control Switches can give some very weird failures . There's four microswitches that make up that system and any one of them that has an issue can cause a cascade. In my case, I fought with those things for a month before I figured out it was oxidized ground points that was causing power not to be supplied. Mind you, they were not so oxidized that you could see it with the naked eye. It was only after disassembling the grounds and cleaning them, that the system came back to life and worked properly.
The point is that I methodically worked through all the issues one by one eliminating what the problem wasn't until the only thing left was what the problem WAS. I bought new microswitches and I still have them because I skipped this or that step. There is no substitute for testing these.
In your case, I would find where that Green power supply wire in the engine compartment is and start testing it for continuity back to the Ranco, then to the 10A fuse then back to the relay and so forth. The answer is there. You just have to find it.
I made two threads where you can see the process of working through the Delanair system. Here and here. While both dealt with the fans not coming on, really they were both about the system not being powered properly.
help with identifying broken ac wire (item #3)
