What could be wrong with my A/C

[chimpy]

Bloody aircon is a pain

I tried my aircon out in january after not using it all winter to find out it didn't work, the A/C light came on but no cool air .

Having owned it for 5 years I'd never had it checked or re-gassed so I took it to my local aircon people.

It had about 50 level of refrigerent in it when it should have had 550 (tells you on the front panel of the car) so it was filled up and off I went with cool air.

All seemed ok for about 3 months and then I noticed the cooling start to drop off.

Oddly though I've noticed, and I'm not making this up, the forward facing dashboard vents seem to blow out airconditioned air in a decreasing pattern from left to right, like this:

Left vent - air-conditioned cool air

Left centre vent - not as cool as left vent but pretty cool

Right centre vent - worse still

Right vent - worst of all, normal unconditioned "cold" air

I'm guessing that the reason for this is because the air intake for the aircon is on the passenger side and by the time it gets to the right vent it's warmed up because the aircon it isn't working properly anyway.

Any idea why this might be before I take it in and get stung? as most of the car places around where I live know less about skoda's than my 3 year old boy.

I've read about flap motors etc but not sure that's the problem, seems to me that I have a leak somewhere.

Cheers

[Clunkclick]

Have you checked to make sure that the cold air on the drivers side is not being diverted into the can cooler located within the driver's side dashboard (Where the diagnosis point is located). There is a little known push-me pull-you lever there which controls this.

If that is not the cause then it may well be that either ducts (External or interal) are blocked/partially blocked with leaf debis or that the cabin air distribution system within the dashboard has jammed distribution valve gear or defective valve motor. Leaf debris in the air intake of the engine compartment is a DIYER's job. Anything else is probably best left to a specialist

A check with VAG COm would reveal the error code for a defective valve motor. Unless you got VAG COM, a diagnostic lead and a laptop, a scan to find this out will cost you £50 a dealer.

To avoid unnecessary costs, might be best to check from first principles.

Going external to internal.

Check to see if leaves etc have ingressed into the white domed plastic air intake in the scuttle/water box in front of the windscreen. This is located in the engine compartment, underneath the full-width plastic cover that sits on top of the water box. As siad before, this could be a self-fix job, if you are a DIYER.

From here, the external air intake then feeds through the passenger cabin bulkhead to the fresh air blower located in the passenger cabin, to the left of the centre console In RHD vehicles) , in the lower dashboard located in the passenger footwell area.

If muck and debris have got beyond the external water box in the engine bay or a component jammed or failed in the cabin air distribution system then quite honestly its best left to an expert - as there's lots to be diassembled/re-assembled, gaskets to be replaced, specilaist silicon adhesives to be used on re-assembly, valves to be recalibrated. Large sections of the dashboard and some electrics have to be removed and there's a danger of accidentally setting off the airbags.

Like you, I get the impression that the local Skoda dealership don't want to know air-con problems, probably because of the risks of consequential damage involved and because its all too much fiddly work.

Because of this, a lot of people just leave the problems alone, especially on older vehicles and live with it.

As an indicator of the possible pitfalls in trying to remedy aircon problems, I can only quote from my own experience. I've got an intermittment failure on the temperature control valve motor which results in intermittment delivery of chilled air to the passenger cabin. The malfunctionning motor clearly shows as an error report for the valve on VAG COM. Initially, when this was mentioned to the dealer on the annual service back in March this year, they decided to re-gass. This didn't work. And, when i took it back to the dealer later in the year, they diagnosed a faulty evapouration sensor. That was replaced at cost of £100 to me and the problem returned shortly after I drove out the garage - the cheeky monkeys had changed the position of the push-me pull-you lever(which appears to by-pass the take-off for the dashboard vents) so that chilled air appeared to be delivered into the cabin. Quel surprise. I suspect that this occured because replacing the evap sensor on the drivers side is an easy job whereas replacing the temperature control valve motor involves removing part of the dashboard adjacent to the passenger footwell and runs the risk of setting-off the passenger airbag.

Doing the job properly is about 3 hours work, £200 labour charge, plus parts, plus VAT - the motor is priced at about £100 retail on-line.

Equally, I wouldn't be too confident about local air-con specilaists, who probably will be good on fault diagnosis of air con and getting the system up and running again but might be not so good disassembling/re-assembling Skoda dashboards.

So for that reason, I've decided to leave the problem alone for the time being and fix it myself in slower time. To this end I purchased a copy of Elsa win off of E-bay (£10) - this has the exploded diagrams and repair procedures for the fresh-air, heating and air-con systems. VAG.COM (VCDS) is freely downloadable from the Ross Tech site and will run on most laptops, so that, if you were to do anything complicated yourself, all you need would be a diagnostic lead to make the diagnosis socket to laptop USB (Or serial) connection (£20 for Chinese one off-of e-bay or £200 for the genuine article).

Getting at the air-distribution gear/motor, which is located near the temperature control valve, would I suspect incur approx the same costs as fixing the temperature control valve i.e £200 labour +parts + VAT.

Nick

Edited 25 July, 2010 by Clunkclick

[chimpy]

Have you checked to make sure that the cold air on the drivers side is not being diverted into the can cooler located within the driver's side dashboard (Where the diagnosis point is located). There is a little known push-me pull-you lever there which controls this.

If that is not the cause then it may well be that either ducts (External or interal) are blocked/partially blocked with leaf debis or that the cabin air distribution system within the dashboard has jammed distribution valve gear or defective valve motor. Leaf debris in the air intake of the engine compartment is a DIYER's job. Anything else is probably best left to a specialist

A check with VAG COm would reveal the error code for a defective valve motor. Unless you got VAG COM, a diagnostic lead and a laptop, a scan to find this out will cost you £50 a dealer.

To avoid unnecessary costs, might be best to check from first principles.

Going external to internal.

Check to see if leaves etc have ingressed into the white domed plastic air intake in the scuttle/water box in front of the windscreen. This is located in the engine compartment, underneath the full-width plastic cover that sits on top of the water box. As siad before, this could be a self-fix job, if you are a DIYER.

From here, the external air intake then feeds through the passenger cabin bulkhead to the fresh air blower located in the passenger cabin, to the left of the centre console In RHD vehicles) , in the lower dashboard located in the passenger footwell area.

If muck and debris have got beyond the external water box in the engine bay or a component jammed or failed in the cabin air distribution system then quite honestly its best left to an expert - as there's lots to be diassembled/re-assembled, gaskets to be replaced, specilaist silicon adhesives to be used on re-assembly, valves to be recalibrated. Large sections of the dashboard and some electrics have to be removed and there's a danger of accidentally setting off the airbags.

Like you, I get the impression that the local Skoda dealership don't want to know air-con problems, probably because of the risks of consequential damage involved and because its all too much fiddly work.

Because of this, a lot of people just leave the problems alone, especially on older vehicles and live with it.

As an indicator of the possible pitfalls in trying to remedy aircon problems, I can only quote from my own experience. I've got an intermittment failure on the temperature control valve motor which results in intermittment delivery of chilled air to the passenger cabin. The malfunctionning motor clearly shows as an error report for the valve on VAG COM. Initially, when this was mentioned to the dealer on the annual service back in March this year, they decided to re-gass. This didn't work. And, when i took it back to the dealer later in the year, they diagnosed a faulty evapouration sensor. That was replaced at cost of £100 to me and the problem returned shortly after I drove out the garage - the cheeky monkeys had changed the position of the push-me pull-you lever(which appears to by-pass the take-off for the dashboard vents) so that chilled air appeared to be delivered into the cabin. Quel surprise. I suspect that this occured because replacing the evap sensor on the drivers side is an easy job whereas replacing the temperature control valve motor involves removing part of the dashboard adjacent to the passenger footwell and runs the risk of setting-off the passenger airbag.

Doing the job properly is about 3 hours work, £200 labour charge, plus parts, plus VAT - the motor is priced at about £100 retail on-line.

Equally, I wouldn't be too confident about local air-con specilaists, who probably will be good on fault diagnosis of air con and getting the system up and running again but might be not so good disassembling/re-assembling Skoda dashboards.

So for that reason, I've decided to leave the problem alone for the time being and fix it myself in slower time. To this end I purchased a copy of Elsa win off of E-bay (£10) - this has the exploded diagrams and repair procedures for the fresh-air, heating and air-con systems. VAG.COM (VCDS) is freely downloadable from the Ross Tech site and will run on most laptops, so that, if you were to do anything complicated yourself, all you need would be a diagnostic lead to make the diagnosis socket to laptop USB (Or serial) connection (£20 for Chinese one off-of e-bay or £200 for the genuine article).

Getting at the air-distribution gear/motor, which is located near the temperature control valve, would I suspect incur approx the same costs as fixing the temperature control valve i.e £200 labour +parts + VAT.

Nick

Cheers for the reply.

I checked the on/off lever in the can cooler and it is off so it's not that.

I'm a decent diy-er so I'll take off the scuttle panel trim and see if it's blocked and try and check the air intake into the cabin.

I do have a decent laptop, so I've ordered the cable and will download the free version of VAG-COM and see what it throws up, that's if I can work out how to use it!

like you say this could end up being an expensive job at a garage as they don't seem to know as much as people on here do, they certainly don't care as much. Given the summers no too far from being over I'm not in a massive rush to get it working, seems more hassle than it's worth for a 9 year old car, too overcomplicated is air-con I could end up spending as much as the cars worth but I'll see what I can do.

thanks again.

[lennyoberon]

Hi,

Had a very similar problem on my fabia (2001) two weeks ago, changed the evap sensor and a re gas and all is well. All good for £70. From what I have read on here the evap sensor is the route of many air con gremlins and my car seemed no different to any of the others. Also recently changed the pollen filter in the cabin couldnt believe the amount of crap in there, it made a huge difference to the effectiveness of the fan.

Probably worth a try.

[chimpy]

Hi,

Had a very similar problem on my fabia (2001) two weeks ago, changed the evap sensor and a re gas and all is well. All good for £70. From what I have read on here the evap sensor is the route of many air con gremlins and my car seemed no different to any of the others. Also recently changed the pollen filter in the cabin couldnt believe the amount of crap in there, it made a huge difference to the effectiveness of the fan.

Probably worth a try.

cheers

Yeah I changed my evap sensor on the off chance it was that when i first had the problem , only thing that did was reduce the amount of skin I have on my knuckles

When I got it re-gassed and it was all fine for a bit too but then I started having problems again.

I changed the pollen filter at the last service which was a couple of months ago so wouldn't have thought it was blocked but you never know