Thread: AC Issues

So, when I bought my car a few months ago the guy said it just needed the AC charged...., ha, really. So, a couple months back my brother charged my AC - and you could hear a very distinct sound of a leaking hose (kind of around the front left side of the car I think) - but the AC blew cold top and bottom while there was still Freon in the system. A few weeks later I noticed that my feet were always getting hot, so I felt down by the bottom vents and lo-and-behold they were blowing heat. All climate control is off. So..., my compressor and blower should be fine because while there was Freon in the system it blew AC just fine, right? If not I got two spares of each from parts cars. But this leaking hose I heard, where could that be located? I didn't think it sounded like the hose coming off the compressor - I was Googling around to figure out where the hose went and potential areas that could leak, but I wasn't using the right keywords or something because I came up empty, thus here I am.

Any suggestions/help would be greatly appreciated, thanks!

Deal with the blend door problem first, then we can deal with the AC. Turn on the Vent and cycle through hot to cold and see what happens.

I'm going to try to write what I found out in the most readable way possible, lol.

I ran the fan through each speed and with 1 I had pretty much no air, then with each subsequent higher setting it increased until 5 - which blew like crazy. Now, while doing this I noticed that the far left, far right, and lefter-most of the middle three vents are barley pushing any air though, even on 5 they were hardly doing anything. But switching on Recirculate causes the semi-dead three upper vents to start to come to life and put out more air (increases with increased fan speed), not as much as the middle two, but definitely more.

The heat on the floor with the climate control off is very minimal now - maybe it's dependent on weather, when it was in the 80s and hot out when the bottom vent air was a lot warmer and more noticeable - it's been in the shop on and off for the past week and it's only in the 60s in there. But doing vent or AC in slow fan increases with each increase of fan speed the heat increases a little from the bottom vents, and if the vent or AC is on top and bottom I get the most heat off the bottom, but with it just on upper vents it puts out less heat on the bottom vents.

Also, I tested out the heat and it's quite...., unimpressive. Not sure if that relates to anything.

Anybody got any ideas/suggestions? Just a place to start and try to fix one problem at a time would be great.

Double Post - Mod Please Delete.

Originally Posted by Dancing Bear

When your brother recharged your a/c, did he add in any leak detector dye? If he didnt, its still a good idea to add it in. Some refrigerants have it built in. Also, do you have the digital climate control or the sliding control type?

No, okay - I'll have him charge it with leak detector dye next time he's back.

could be a blend door actuator. mine took a crap. you can take it off and turn the knob by hand to see if it blows colder or not.

if it still blows warmer the ac needs to be charged.

Originally Posted by crownvicguy311

Just wondering if you resolved this issue. My 98 is having the same problems. I have nice cold air blowing on the passenger side, but the air in the drivers side is not as cold. It seems to be about the same volume of air through all the vents though, so I don't believe it to be the blend door.

I took it to a shop and the hvac door actuator and mode module had to be replaced for mine. It was something like $380 worth of parts.