VAskodas

hello @Poshett the actual problem was low refrigerant level in the AC system. The symptom beside the not cold air was a hissing noise in the cabin generated every time i pressed the ac button. Finally I went to a skoda dealer and they refill the system and check for leaks. No leaks were found. Although they say if there is a small leak somewhere in the piping at the dashboard side it will be costly repair! I paid 92€ for this. The cost is depended on how much refrigerant they have to fill + the standard labor. Nevertheless, the AC is now ice cold as it should. P.S: The refrigerant type of my '16 Skoda Octavia 3 TSI 1.4L is R134a. I thought it was the new r1234yf but it wasn't. I hope your problem is the same and not worse.

No. I didn't have this extra part. just the valve. are you sure you have found the correct valve for your vehicle?

No problem. always happy to help. One last thing. to remove the blower fan it is extremely easy. just unplug the connector and twist the fan anti clockwise and it's off.

Hi. Yes indeed the drain hose is located behind the foot rest (on right hand drive cars). WARNING: i strongly advise you to not try to pull off the tube because there is a risk to rip off the tube and then you will another problem to solve. I did not find an external drain tube (i believe it is hidden behind the heat shield of the firewall in engine bay) but instead i removed the blower motor inside the cabine and it is relatively easy to feed a cleaning foam tube inside the big gap and do the job. For better results, use product the one that has omnidirectional holes on the tip end of the tube to apply the cleaning agent to the entire surface. TIP: use your phone camera to see how far you have to feed the tube and the position of the evaporator core. I hope the description will help you. If not ask me for further assistance.

5w30

well this concludes that at least part of the problem is a gas quantity in AC system for sure. Thanks for the info.

It's sad to hear that this is normal but in the same time it is good to know that this is not a problem at least. This is one of the things that should not be ''normal'' because it sounds like it is a problem. It bothers me to hear this at every cold start. Dont know. I hope in OBDeleven there is some setting that eliminates this but i'm not so positive about that.

Not sure if this would be the only reason but i guess it can contribute to poor cooling at some degree.

Ok. That’s good. So no issues there. It is helpful to know that this is how it should be. Moving on then…😁

Maybe it is true but the thing that confuses me is that on the ac menu screen it shows you the air flow vents that you have selected and when you use let’s say the front vent setting it shows you the side and the front vents being activated and when you use the footwell setting it shows only the according vents but not the side ones. So either it’s it a default set up for side vents being active all the time or something is wrong here.

Yes I agree. I noticed something else tonight. While I was set the air vents to the footwell air flaps I was getting air also from the left and right side vents although on the infotainment screen menu the graphic representation of the airflow showed that the air is going only to footwell vents!! So it must be the air flap mixing problem here for sure.

Indeed it has that option to individually set some options and yes it was set to ECO. But I do not believe that this was the cause of my issue because I did not use that mode. I used only normal and sometimes the sport mode. All measurements that I checked previously was while in normal mode and cannot really tell if the ac setting wasn’t or was on eco mode. In fact now I’m thinking that probably when used ECO mode the ac is set to ECO and when used NORMAL OR SPORT MODE the ac setting is on normal. So that’s that. But it still cannot handle the 33°C ambient temperature in lowest temp setting and full blast. The only solution for now is to use the recirculating air when the inside temperature is lower than external.

Nice. Thanks for the info. Will check will check tonight.

I didn’t noticed any other option in AC menu other that SYNC, AUTO/MANUAL, and some monitoring figures that change when you adjust each option. I don’t remember if the little gear/setting button does or has some extra options….i will check it.

Thanks for the input. You are right. Eventually I have to deal with this if these facts that cannot be changed. One more thing though, do you know about the ac control valve? It seems like it’s responsible for the flow of refrigerant into the system and looks like most of the time this fails and all the symptoms we discussed here is probably from this.

I want to mention that not only the engine cooling expansion tank could have a silikat bag but the AC system also has a dryer that contains pretty much the same material inside it in form of small balls, so maybe you are right about something being clogged up.

It does cool down a little bit after around 10 min so after that putting it on recirculation mode has a meaning.

That’s right. Indeed if the air flaps are in wrong position and mixing the cooled air and the air from the heater then it can cause asymmetric temps but this has nothing to do with heater core being clogged or not. In fact if it was clogged I wouldn’t have this difference though. 😁

You are right it is only for the engine cooling and heating the interior of the car. Different system different circuit. But to answer you question about mit silikat, no it doesn’t have this bag. I think on late 2013 and up they removed this expansion tank bag.

When outside temperature is 40°C inside the car is at least 42°C I measured so no gain from there. As J.R stated in his comment it’s better to cool down interior temperature gradually and then use the recirculation mode because it will be already lower than outside air. Either way, I still think my expectations are reasonable because it is almost certain that the system has some sort of irregularity so when I sort it out any gain at this point will be beneficial.

The fans are running but on live data I noticed that they won’t go above 38-40% speed. Never seen the speed close to 100%. The AC system has the new type of refrigerant (HOF 1234 yf) or R1234yf and don’t know if a slight deviation of refrigerant capacity is playing a major factor or not (in case of a leak). And yes I do expect from AC to be able to handle summertime temperatures at full blast cuz it’s been for me like this forever and can’t get it when I have newer/modern/in theory better car and cannot have the cooling that I I had with older ones. It’s a shame for me. I think the last step for me is to visit a shop for ac recharge and address the air flaps being possibly in wrong position. Thanks for the input.

Well I believe that still there is a problem somewhere in the system because it should be able to cool the air no matter how hot is outside. I’m saying this because I had an old fiat stilo 2003 that doesn’t has this problem. Also at my workplace we have a VW pickup truck AMAROK that doesn’t have this issue of not be able to cool the hot outside air enough at full blast. That’s why I’m insisting. In fact I never experienced this issue on any car I drove. My brother’s Hyundai accent 2004 still can cool down the air enough at any fan speed at any ambient temperature. At least it’s not so obvious to me compared to my Octavia 2016. Plus, I hear a brief low sound hissing noise in cabin when I turn on the AC so I think this is also an indication of some problem in AC system.

So, I checked the values at daytime and here is what i noticed. When I set the AC at lowest temperature and the fan speed at maximum it never could produce enough cool air. But when I reduced the fan speed to half speed I saw a big difference. The readings was nowhere near as before and the air was cool enough not ice cold though! My theory is that due to low refrigerant on AC system it cannot compensate outside hot air to make it cold with the fan blowing on high setting. That’s why when I reduced the blower speed it manages to cool the air. Last but not least the pressure of refrigerant seems a bit high at 16 bar(232PSI)!! Does it fit as a symptom of the fault?? I’m posting the live data here.

Well I checked live data and let me say this is not what I’m getting at day time!! Data was taken at nighttime and the AC worked fine. At 31 to 33°C ambient temp I was getting pretty cool air from the AC. There was a minor difference in temperature from right side but later it settled at 2 degrees difference (see photos). Im not sure about the refrigerant pressure (8.2 to 11.4 bar) but it was a bit too high of what I saw on YouTube on VW group cars. (Around 6bars). Nvm, again this is not representative data of what I’m getting at day time with higher ambient temperatures. I will try live data at day time tomorrow and update here.

Good point thanks. I will pull the data tomorrow to see if there is a difference.