Friday, October 15, 2010

People I have encountered so far in regards to my air con services.

A little glimpse of what kind of customers that I have come across in the negative aspect towards my services.

1) "I have driven cars for more than 20yrs. Owned each of them. Never in my life heard that air con must service. This is a boo thing. I am not going to get it done. Period."

2) "Where got oil one?"

3) "You sure or not?"

4) "Air con not cold? Just top up gas can liao."

5) "Don't want lah. Wait do liao alot of problem can happen..."

6) "Just pump the oil treatment, enough already."

7) "Compressor no need service. Spoil liao just change. Air con then like new."

Many more.

Since day one, air con compressor has oil in the system in order to have moving parts lubricate. The oil also lines the walls of the pipings when the gas moves through the system. The oil lubricates the system everywhere it goes.

This oil will wear and will be worn out like engine oil in the engine. Once the life of the oil is gone, the oil will no longer lubricate the system and it actually turns against the car owner. Moving parts will wear out faster and a compressor failure is a matter of time.

If you are mechanically inclined, then you will understand what does 'volumetric efficiency' means.

With the oil and just enough gas in the system, the compressor will use min. effort to run and it will give you the coldest possible air in the cabin. When you have too much gas, it does not only cause compressor premature failure. Too much gas in the system, air con will not be cold too.

Why do we top up gas? It is deal to leak.

How come got leak? No system is perfect and leakage is normal and so topping up gas does help in such instances.

If your system has no leak and you top up gas... probably no gas top up at all or too much gas in the system. Sometimes, when you top up too much gas, the serviceman actually reduces the volume of gas in your system to get your air con cold.

What is treatment oil? It is an addictive that enhances the oil in the system for better lubrication. If you always use the treatment oil but not service the system, you will have a overcharged system with too much oil in system. Air con system will become intermittent. Hot cold hot cold is such symptoms.

Would the servicing cause the climate control to fail? NO. The servicing only flushed out your oil and recharge with new oil and gas. It has nothing to do with your climate or electrical control system. If it fails, your climate control module is faulty.

I have a client changed out his air con compressor twice. Each last only for a yr or less. Air con is only cold for about 3months and then performance lost. Until it is unbearable, change another unit but a recon unit.

Recon unit is fine but it is the installer who does the swap that could give you a lot of problem. This client has extremely dirty oil in his recon system when I flushed the oil out. Check out the evo's photos. Client mentioned that his system is intermittent. Cold day cold, hot day hot. Sometimes cold day also warm air. Kinda like kana 4D when the air con is cold... oh well.

I am not saying that if I flushed and refresh the system will help eliminate the problems. It all depends on the recon unit condition as well. If the recon unit is still good to use, you will most likely to have a cold air con to stay with. Like most of the cases, recon unit works well after flush if the recon unit is still good. If recon unit is not good, even after flushing the air con will still be bad.

How do we know if the compressor unit is good or bad? Only the installer knows and sometimes he does not. End up it depends greatly on your luck.

So if you service your air con compressor yearly, you are likely to enjoy cold cold air con throughout your ownership of your car.

As new technology progresses, air con compressor unit normally becomes smaller and uses less oil but less oil also means that the oil will turn bad faster. Engine heat remains the same most of the time or even hotter at times, but less oil and smaller compressor meaning more loads are experienced by the smaller unit. Regular servicing is critical to keep the smaller unit alive.

Less oil in the system means that the production plant will get to enjoy lots of savings. A typical system holds between 100-250cc of oil. Newer and smaller compressor uses less oil like sometimes 60-80cc only. It is a huge savings but car owners would not know that they will have to service their system more frequently. Car owners will bear the costs for maintenance and that is why cars are cheaper to buy nowadays for some brands as alot of parts are swapped out to save costs.

JDM and EDM have different OMV. Why is it so even for the same model? Smaller cc engine car can have higher OMV than bigger cc cars. Thank about it.

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Recon's Perils!!!













I have been working on car after car and the greatest problem encountered by owners so far is those reconditioned compressor unit.

There is nothing wrong with the compressor unit in terms of installation and gas charging. The problem lies with the amount of oil that is supposed to be top up too.

Common findings:

1) No new oil. (Extremely dirty oil flushed out.)
2) Oil treatment used instead. (At least got use oil but normally overfilled the system.)
3) Too much gas.
4) Not enough gas.
5) System not flushed but still charged up with fresh oil. (Overfilled system.)
6) Not enough oil in system.

The list still goes on and on...

"This is the third compressor that I have in my car..."
"Got oil in system? Something new!"
"Air con compressor can be serviced, really?"
ETC...

If you feel that your air con system is behaving strange lately, sometimes it is already too late.

So far, cars with the most times of compressor changed are... EVOs and EVOs, then WRXs.

If you have a monster in the bonnet, you better keep your air con check'ED! Mitsubishi tops my lists now. I have only worked on a few EVOs and almost all have recon'ed units. Subaru is not uncommon but don't add to the stats.