Hi all,

I have just been told by my local Skoda dealer that the reason my air con has stopped working is because a stone has hit my AirCon Condenser Unit. Great!

They are quoting £450 to replace it but I am quite handy with cars and have just found this *NEW SKODA OCTAVIA AIR CONDITIONING AIR CONDENSER UNIT on eBay, also, Skoda, Car Parts, Cars, Parts Vehicles (end time 13-Aug-08 19:37:08 BST)

Has anyone fitted one of these before? If so, how much work is needed, what do you have to remove and roughly how long does it take?

Cheers!

That looks like the fella.

As you have no gas in your system that shouldn't be an issue. If you are doing it yourself you should also budget for a new dryer, vac down and re gas.

It'll take you a couple of hours I reckon.

Cheers, do you know if the front end needs to be taken off or just the Condenser? As the car is only 15 months old and I think the air con has been broken for some time (therefore not used) do you think I will need to change the new dryer and vac down still? I think a regas is about £30 so that's not too bad I think compaired to £450!

Cheers!

Yes I think you'll find the dryer change is recomended and the reason for a vac down is to help to remove moisture after breaking into the system.

It doesn't look a bad job.

Bumper (head lights out) and under tray off, then you'll need to remove the radiator fans - Be carefull with the big plug near the bottom as it has a weird locking arrangement.

Once you've done that then next is the radiator so you'll need to catch the coolant in a clean container.

Then would be the Intercooler and finally you'll have access to the Condensor.

Im the process of building a protective grill for my VRS to stop this sort of thing from happening in the first place. Found some nice aluminium mesh and now making a simple supporting frame to be placed in front of radiator behind the lower grill (through which I can pass my hand incidently - no wonder stones get to the radiator).