Hi all,

It's a proper roaster out there and my aircon is working.... but it's not exactly powerful or anywhere near of good as my wife's MK VI golf.

Just TADTS or something up?

 

How old is your Fabia?

 

Might benefit from a regas??

 

You are lucky to have aircon, I have poverty spec S trim with no aircon!

 

Davy

Mine is just up from poverty spec S... it's an S with aircon :P

It's deffo working and only  20 months old.  Just wondering how others found their aircon in 30c heat.

Mine seems pretty powerful, had to turn it off today as my fingers were getting cold on the wheel!

The air con in my 15 month old Fabia SE spec does work but it takes a while to blast out the warm air from the ducts into the car and then to cool the car down. Make sure it is on recirc mode first to avoid dragging warm air into the car. I agree with Abaxas that it is not very powerful and it has been like this from new so I think that that is how it is designed. In these 30 degree C temperatures it is probably working at full capacity. I have been in other cars where the AC is more powerful so maybe it is a Skoda shortcoming but at least it does work as I notice the difference when I get out of the car into the 30 degree heat.

I've got climate control on mine but don't think that makes any difference? I usually open my windows for a couple of minutes while I drive out the hot air.

 

I find it takes a few more minutes to fully cool the car down when it's on the 'LO' setting.

31 minutes ago, wiganken1 said:

The air con in my 15 month old Fabia SE spec does work but it takes a while to blast out the warm air from the ducts into the car and then to cool the car down. Make sure it is on recirc mode first to avoid dragging warm air into the car. I agree with Abaxas that it is not very powerful and it has been like this from new so I think that that is how it is designed. In these 30 degree C temperatures it is probably working at full capacity. I have been in other cars where the AC is more powerful so maybe it is a Skoda shortcoming but at least it does work as I notice the difference when I get out of the car into the 30 degree heat.

That's probably it. I'm more used to the wife's 'artic blast' aircon when the fabia is more of a 'chilled breeze'.

 

On 6/29/2018 at 01:36, abaxas said:

...  Just wondering how others found their aircon in 30c heat.

LOL - only 30c ???

 

Actually, living in a fairly warm climate I do use the aircon pretty regularly and I have noticed a couple of things...

 

Firstly, it does take a little longer than other cars for the compressor to kick in and the system to start cooling.  (Conversely I've also noticed it takes a while for the heater to get decently warm too).

 

Anyway, once working the air temperature seems to be reasonably cold. As far as I can tell the main issue isn't the air temperature, it's the fan / ventilation system. The HVAC fan certainly makes lots of noise as though it's blowing a cyclone, but the actual airflow is relatively feeble, so the volume of cooled air isn't great.

 

That said it does (barely) manage to cope with an Aussie summer - I've certainly had cars with worse air conditioning.

 

For what it's worth I've noticed fuel economy increases by around 0.4L/100km when using the aircon.

 

 

Yes, I agree on the inadequate circulation/distribution of air in these cars, well at least a similar Polo, and it seems the similar Ibiza, so a design mess up really.

 

It can get quite annoying in winter, when you know that the engine is up to temperature, but you can never convince the HVAC to heat the car up to your satisfaction, this was never an issue with the 2002 versions of these cars I think - certainly from my experience of the 2002 Polo, that car cooled down and heated up the cabin basically as you might have expected - and same for a previous to that Ibiza that my daughter owned, this inadequate heating/cooling is new to me and I've had many cars over the years.  I just wonder what the next generation of this VW Group size of cars will be like in this respect.

What I have found with mine is the hot setting is really good but cold is pretty poor, that’s my windows opened to try and cool the car down before I go anywhere.

 

Davy

Yesterday I had to do a 300 mile round trip in 27+C heat. Instead of putting the fan on 3 with re-circ I did the same with the fan on 2. About twenty minutes into the journey I was starting to loose the feeling in my fingers as it was so cold !

I guess the air con isn't the best but does work properly, just maybe not as savage as I'm used to.

 

Mine is definitely feeling a bit feeble, I'm sure it's not as powerful as it once was. The car's 2 years old now. I am tempted to get a regas. Fuel consumption is definitely worse with the A/C on... not helped by awful Manchester traffic!

I have had my SEL with climate controll for just over 3 years and run it consistently on automatic at 18c in this hot weather Its manageing to cope with this hot weather ok put it on recirclate if the cabins very hot till it cools down. May get a regass at next service which is due in April, my old skoder 1.9 diesel had the aircon regassed once in 10 years. I believe its important to keep the seals moist with the oil in the system. Joe

I'd think that you would be hard pushed to find a car under 8 years old that did not have a continuously run variable displacement A/C chiller compressor, so no need to run it every week or so to keep the seals oiled up as while it is "OFF" it is still running on minimum displacement and that means passing some refrigerant and oil round the system pipework.

My 16 month old Fabia has manual air con but it works really well. It has been chilling down the cabin beautifully with it set to recirc and fan position '2', but don't forget to reset to normal airflow after 10 mins as you will be running out of oxygen lol.  It gets too cold after a few miles even when it's 32c outside. On a freezing winter day I find the heater far too hot after a few miles on full heat setting and normally end up with it in the 20c position (half way). In that position the car will keep the cabin at 20c. I've been driving a C3 Citroen today in this very hot spell of weather. The aircon was about the same as my Fabia, pretty good!

I had a rental C3 in Spain a couple of years ago, literally the only thing I liked about the car was its A/C system!

 

Mine has seemingly perked up a bit as I've been doing long journeys with it on. No idea why, but it now seems back to how it was. 

VC...the C3 I was driving I liked very much. It had the 3 cylinder 1.2 turbo Puretech engine with 110ps and 205nm of torque. It was coupled to the EAT6 6spd auto box (it has a torque converter). The engine and the box were superb and very smooth and powerful, more so than my Fabia. The comfort was great even over a hundred mile drive in searing heat. I'm actually thinking about buying one for my wife as it was so good and there are loads of factory and dealer incentives at the moment. Colours and trim options are beyond belief on these! Sorry to op for going off topic.

Edited 10 July, 20187 yr by Estate Man

The one I had was a previous-generation C3, not the new one. It had a 1.4 HDI engine, which was glacial, and barely more efficient than my Fabia. 

 

On 08/07/2018 at 18:22, rum4mo said:

I'd think that you would be hard pushed to find a car under 8 years old that did not have a continuously run variable displacement A/C chiller compressor, so no need to run it every week or so to keep the seals oiled up as while it is "OFF" it is still running on minimum displacement and that means passing some refrigerant and oil round the system pipework.

 

my 2004 mk5 golf had a variable displacement compressor so the Germans started phasing them out a long time ago but they are still about on other makes and models. Nissan still use them to this day and my 2018 Fiat Ducato also uses a clutched compressor 

 

In my opinion the clutched system is much better, easier to maintain and repair if you need to change the coil but of course at the cost of a few mpg here and there. You get a problem with the new style and its a right ball ache

Well I played safe using "8 years" as I knew that Polo had them fitted in 2002 and that was 16 years ago, I'm very surprised that Fiat is taking so long to adopt this trend, okay coils are easier to replace, but so far I've never had a compressor fail and not having a coil is one thing less to fail.

 

Coil failure is an added inconvenience as that coil will have failed because it is a poor design and for no other reason, ie the compressor's general state of health can not influence if or when a coil fails.

 

As well as energy/fuel savings, these systems run more efficiently in that they only deliver the quantity of R134A required at any time so are perfectly sized for all conditions.