Ac question do enlighten me.?

Question

At my shop today, we got a customer with an ac issue, he spent 450 dollars on both ac lines and evac and recharge. On his way home from that shop, the ac quit blowing cold. He came to me today and requested for me to change the evaporator and expansion valve, I gave him a counter quote for 675.00 installed ( 96 Honda Accord ) 4 cyl. We did a temp check first, granted its 105 here in Arizona today, his temp out the vents was 80 at nine this morning when it was already over 90 outside. Gauges read correct, the other shop did put correct amount of freon in the vehicle. We turn the climate know left for cold, right to left, seems the doors are opening and closing. After we did what he requested, the temp was blowing 60-65 at initial start up then climbed to 70 (which is better than 80) but it still wasn't 50-55. What could the problem have been? I do have the answer but I want to hear what kind of shade tree information / input I get from this. Again the readings were perfect checked twice

that would be climate knob not know

and right for heat not right for left

bart is close and rat got it correct lol j/k but i did give u a thumbs up for rat bart you are smart, you know the business like me.

Bart you were pretty close dawg, my tech and I both checked the knob to go from cold to hot, we could feel it in the car and just assumed it closed all the way, we took the instrument cluster off which was a pain in the az, and that know has like two set of round teeth on the back of it, like a clock, one is a complete circle, and one is 180 degrees, we came to the conclusion that someone turned the knob too fast or too far and it slipped one tooth, the blend door was closing 97% of the way but it stuck the last 3/8". I was pulling my hair out to figure this mf out, we turned the gears one tooth, and that was enough to close the 3/8" gap and block the little bit of heat.

if i mispell knob one more time im gonna cut my balz off god i hate typos

I will tell you dude, I haven't been to this site very long, a couple weeks, and there are very few people that know how the auto field work and you are one of them, as are a very select group of others, fordman, and someone else also rat is kool and so is mr know, they seem to be anyways

Answer 1

If the temp blend door is sealing properly I would suspect outside air instead of recirc. This will certainly raise the output by 10-15 degress easily, as the air only gets one shot through the evaporator.
Am I close???
Interesting, the pressures were right with a resricted orifice??? I would have expected a low side drop and a high side increase....where as with outside air the readings would have been correct, just high on both sides.....

Answer 2

There's a lot of details missing from this, but I'm going to guess that if the system worked properly out the door of the first shop, and then somewhere on the way home it suddenly quit, that it's possible the expansion valve became clogged.

Replacing lines requires meticulous care to avoid getting dirt into the system, and possibly the first shop didn't take proper precautions to avoid that.

I'm not sure why the evaporator would need to be replaced, but as they say, "the customer is always right!".

Answer 3

Sounds like evacuation wasn't complete and moisture was still in lines since it went down to 55 then back up after a few some lines take a little longer to evacuate the moisture. By changing the evaporator it seemed to help My experience is take a little more time and you should be in good shape.

Answer 4

What was your evap. temp? You said guages read correctly, but that is all relative to ambient temp. What was your head pressure? Were the fans on high? Suction pressure?

Based on info given, sounds like a starved evaporator, icing in the orifice tube, maybe.

Answer 5

dirt in expansion valve or plugged evap fins? Possibly heater control valve not closing. Radiator cooling fan not operating allowing too high condenser temps. Blower air supply not on recirc. Windows rolled down.

Answer 6

In order to remove the heat from the inside cabin, an equal amount of that heat needs to be expelled outside.

Is the electric fan on the condensor working when you turn the A/C on?

Answer 7

It means that it is HOT. You're only going to cool so many degrees below ambient.