A mate took his Octy into Kwikfit to get the A/C recharged last autumn. After he got it back it was worse than before. He was getting married so he he didn't follow it up until now.

Everything seemed to be OK (clutch, fans, etc) so I put it on the recharge station. The first go recovered 140ml of PAG oil. The second recovered 85ml. It took five cycles to get down to 50ml.

It still isn't working and has the symptoms of a dead compressor.

Anyone seen this before?

Can the compressor be saved/brought back to life?

Normally I would just swap it out, but the guy's broke as he just got married.

Yeah I've seen dead compressors on plenty on these.. usually have to be replaced but probably could be saved changing bearings etc etc but im not sure.. no an AC specialist.

There are a lot of octavias for sale needing 'air con regassing' for that precise reason mate...

As far as I can tell the bearings are OK and it's not leaking. I will try discharging the system and opening the oil drain in case the recharge station couldn't get all the oil out of the compressor.

Not sure what sort of damage trying to compress a circuit full of oil would do. Assuming I recovered all the PAG oil, there was at least 235ml in there.