AC nightmare...

Rewind back to 2009 end of year.  I had just bought Grimace and the AC went out on Ruby.  The only reason I parked her, as I had a perfectly good AC right there in the driveway.  $8 to swap the plate over, done! 
Poked around  the FS section and bought a never been used Reman Compressor from JayOldSchool.   He delivered in person while visiting his folks in FL.  Took me about a year or so to put it on the car.  Everything was fine, but I wasn't driving the car, as I was giving it to my son, who was too lazy to get his license.

So about a month after he started driving in summer 2012, the bearing on the clutch assembly of the reman unit started getting noisy.  Darn it all, I just replaced this thing 500 miles ago!  He limped it along until it got really bad about 1000 miles later.  Being a poor college boty, you can imagine my excitement when I went to the JY and saw a TBI Caprice wagon with 90K on it (hit in rear) with an OEM Harrison compressor.  Started unbolting it and the system depressurized.  Yaay, it's probably good.  Paid $30 plus 20 for the core and took it home.

Finally got around to it last night as it's hot as all get out and junior doesn't like being all sweaty when he goes on a date.  Figure it'll be all simple like.......famous last words right?

Should have been, evacuate  R12 (yes, R12) to a holding tank, swap the compressor over, vac it down, fill it up, crack a beer right?  Mmm, hmm.

So as we are disassembling things, I notice that there is no high pressure cut out switch on the 'new' one. Hmm, pop the hood on the 91 Olds.  It doesn't have one either, chalk it up to the auto climate control.  Ok, so I unbolt everything and we remove the one off the car.  Son of a you know what, the connections for the pressure hoses are different!?  What the Heck, how could this even be possible?  I am amazed and dumbfounded and pretty f'in pissed.  

Car's all apart and we google up a replacement.  Find one at Advance in town for 140 + 10 for a core.  We go get it as JR wants AC and has a job now.  We buy it and the guy advises I have to buy ALL the piecey parts to have the 1 yr warranty.  We pass as we don't have or really need the extra 110 bucks worth of parts as they all have about 1000 miles on them and the compressor part was still good. 

We put it all back one and life seems good.  It's now 11PM and I have to work in the morning  and the R12 is buried in the garage.  Sooo today after work I figure it's going to be fill it back up and enjoy icy AC.  Hook up the recovery tank which should put 50% back in, then pull the rest from the tank.  Hook it all up, get 45 PSI in the accumulator, and fire up the engine.  No compressor.

Trouble shoot and it's the new compressor (reman) from Advance.  Clutch won't engage.  Took the old one put it on the air cleaner and plugged it in.  Click, boom, clutch engages right away and it's not attached to the car other than the wire.  New one all rigged and partially loaded....nothing.

Who did I piss off this week?  Leaving at 6AM for 4 days to Texas.

So I'm out 50 for the junkyard and now maybe 150 from Advance if they won't take the return.  WHat a crock of poop.  And still no AC

It never fails!

I hate reman'd R4 compressors.   Nothing but issues.  Hope they get you sorted out when you get home.    Could you possibly try to return it to another Advance?

Be safe on your trip here, and dress cool...it's HOT in Austin now.

-Mike

What's AC?  I never have to worry about that.

Tom

silverfox103 wrote:

What's AC?  I never have to worry about that.

Tom

What's road salt?   I never have to worry about that. 

What's an ice scraper or snow tires?   I have heard such things exist

I feel like I'm getting ganged up on.

I hear they put their ice in places other than their rocks glasses.

So weird.

Stingroo wrote:

I hear they put their ice in places other than their rocks glasses.

So weird.

That is odd....

And salt isn't for margaritas.

Strange backward lands.

well,. we don't have cracked dashs or droopy headliners either,...

Touché.

Not even a fair fight,gladly take cracked dashes,drooping headliners and AC problems over RUST any time/day of the  week!

Well if anyone made it through that segue, the issue is fixed.

Apparently the num-nums that rebuilt the compressor painted the terminals over. It came me days later, cleaned them up and viola! The compressor she is running! Got it all charged up on frosty r-12!

Sprocket wrote:

Well if anyone made it through that segue, the issue is fixed.

Apparently the num-nums that rebuilt the compressor painted the terminals over.  It came me days later, cleaned them up and viola!  The compressor she is running!   Got it all charged up on frosty r-12!

Cool,.