I've been driving today on the motorway with the windows open, its been so hot and the ac is doing nothing.

Will see what Thursday brings when it goes into the dealer to be looked at, i'm hoping something can be done, its a shame, as the car is fantastic in every aspect apart from the a/c,,,,,,but now i'm not looking forward to the summer....

Edited 28 May, 201214 yr by BorderCollieSam

Agreed, even after my new compressor, drier and a regas a few weeks back the AC feels quite feeble compared to other cars I've had in the past. The MKIV Astra had EPIC air con, in fact it hurt it was that cold. Hell, even the Citroen Xantia AC was better, despite having an AC clutch so sudden it would make the car jerk when it came on. In fact even the wifes Fabia has stronger AC and that's never been re-gassed and has 90k on the clock.

The AC on the Octy is just plain crap IMO. Prone to failure, and weak as wee wee when it's 'working'. Well done VAG.

Not trying to start an argument, but its funny how different people can have different perceptions of the same cars! We had 3 Xantias in the family, two of them from new, and they had the most feeble aircon of any car I've driven. Only last night my stepfather asked me to have a look at their mk4 Astra as the aircon appears to have packed up yet again, after having a new condensor and re-gas less than a year ago. He complained the aircon in their Astra has always been pathetic, not like that in my Octavia which he found really good!

Not trying to start an argument, but its funny how different people can have different perceptions of the same cars! We had 3 Xantias in the family, two of them from new, and they had the most feeble aircon of any car I've driven. Only last night my stepfather asked me to have a look at their mk4 Astra as the aircon appears to have packed up yet again, after having a new condensor and re-gas less than a year ago. He complained the aircon in their Astra has always been pathetic, not like that in my Octavia which he found really good!

Agreed, my old xantia was brilliant along with my two old mk1 octys the worst I've seen was my 51 plate primera and my 52 plate and 54 plate hyundai's, they were rubbish!

Edited 29 May, 201214 yr by mdon

Yeah different cars can give strange results as I mentioned the astra blows an ice storm, so not sure why other astra h's would be different.

Skippy41,

you should be using the recirulation all the time, there's no point having air drawn in through the system and then having the system dry it out, workshop test is thermometer in air vent , set to full cold, recirc on, make sure pollen filter is clean.

kev

Edited 3 June, 201214 yr by kblackburn

hi guys,

had my 06 plate petrol vrs for 3 days and the a/c was/is dire, i just went to halfords and bought one of the EZ Chill Auto Air Conditioning Recharge kits (£42with discount card) i ran the engine for 3 mins with the a/c on LO and with the a/c fans on max, i then attached the gauge to the air-conditioning low pressure service port, the gauge went straight to 150psi and blew the blue top off the gauge.

So whats the problem do you think???

karl

Those Halfrauds kits are a waste of money.

Take it to an independant specialist.

I've had 3 Octavia Elegances, a Mk1, a Mk2 and Mk2 FL (59reg) so all with Climatronic. There was not much differencein A/C performance between the first two but when i got the FL i immediately noticed it didn't cool as well on a sunny day. On a hot day i found that i was still feeling hot even though i had it set to 18'C. On the previous 2 cars i would set it to 20 and it felt colder inside, 18 would have been uncomfortably cold for me.

I took it to my dealer and they checked it out. Much to my surprise they delcared it had passed all the A/C checks and therefore in spec. They showed me the temperature of the air leaving the vent and they could get the interior temp down to 15'C by setting the temp to the lowest setting "Low".

However they missed the point or just couldn't understand. When the climatronic is set to 20'C the temperature inside is much warmer than this but the system is not trying to cool, it reduces the fan speed because it thinks it is ok. On a hot day with it set to 20 the fan comes on high and the temperature comes down but not far enough, it decides its low enough when it isn't really anywhere near the set temperature. To compensate i set to 18'C, the lowest regulated temperature, this improves things slightly but it is definitely inferior to the previous 2 cars.

I run a 54 Plate Octavia 2, 1.9 TDI, Elegance with Climatronic Air Conditioning and I had a diagnostic done for an unrelated (ABS brake sensor) problem and during the diagnostic the technician accidentally found an "Air Con ECU failure" alert. Since they did not do this type of repair they could do no more than tell me what the alert said. I have not taken this further at this stage but could this be something else to look at? Has anyone heard of this "Air Con ECU failure" issue and if it is expensive to fix?

Incidentally it seems to me from the previous posts that air con problems are expensive to fix and even when fixed the results aren't worth the cost of fixing them? Cost wise the Pollen Filter comments from 110ivan and m0bov seem the cheap thing to try out first. Everything else isn't worth the cost unless having a 'working' air con system is important to you.

On my car when turned to 'LO' (below 16 deg C with Economy mode 'OFF') the fan speed increases a lot but it does not blow cold air and it can be warm air. Sometimes it does blow cold so the compressor must be working or it would not blow cold at any time. Before I was told about the diagnostic message I had the system checked for leaks, vacuumed out and re-gassed, but to no avail. I might try changing the pollen filter as a cheap shot but if that doesn't work then I'll leave mine as-is because in every other respect I love the car.

Sat in traffic in France today outside temp 34 C but inside the wife wanted a cardigan ! Maybe I am lucky but my octy kept us cool !

On my Mk.1 Octy it is 750g R134a+50g oil.

Interesting then that my Mk2 is 525g - probably explains why they don't cool like they used to ..........