My Octavia made a grumbling sound, but only when set at 20 to 24 degrees. No grumbling outside of those temps. Seemed as if it didn’t know whether to blow faster or not, as if fan starting and stopping continually. Not noticed it on my Karoq, but only had it two days!

Well, took a long time to get an appt with courtesy car at the dealer, but it went in yesterday and, as the noise is much less noticeable now it's colder, I got a technican out to listen to it.  Noise is still there, and he could hear it, but it's much more subtle.  I played a recording I'd made of it back in August and he seemed more convinced.

 

I thought they might regass it and leave it at that, but I got a call later in the day to say they'd listened to the compressor and determined it was excessively noisy and they'll replace it. 

 

On collection I got the impression that replacing them isn't ususal (and the one on daughter's SEAT Ateca packed up last year too).   The pretty well identical to ours courtesy car had a compressor I could hear too - although it didn't have the strangulated noise from behind the dash, there was a noticeable click on and off of the compressor, almost like the clutched ones do, and the noise of it running was obvious (vs when it was switched off).

 

Resurrecting this oldish thread, I had noted that my aircon on my MY19 1.0 TSI DSG SE Tech Karoq, was making a certain whirring noise and I intended to get it serviced and that I would report back.  I finally got round to doing this 2 days ago at a garage in Bristol and the whirring noise is gone - the garage said that fluid levels had been substantially down.  At the same time got them to do the 'annual' front to back wheel swap to even out tyre wear.

 

Going down to Bristol the day before on my monthly visit, it was 28*C outside and I set the heater temp to 22*C and was quite comfortable like that.  There were big time traffic jams on the M25 around Potters Bar at the journey's start and it took me 1.75hrs to get to the M4 an hour longer than usual.  This resulted in an economy figure of around 48mpg for the trip, which actually is not that much worse than I'd been normally getting recently (haven't quite been managing 50mpg on any trip).  However on the way back with aircon properly sorted, I broke all records and did just about 55mpg (57mpg on the display - about 4% optimistic).  This is 2mpg better than my previous record of a few years ago.  This time the outside temperature didn't get above 19*C and I set the heater to 20*C both sides, which I suppose means the aircon didn't really have to work too hard, as it wasn't trying to lower the car air temp.  Anyhow pleased to get the aircon sorted and at the improved economy.

 

I must admit he aircon re-gassing may not have been the only factor in the better mpg figure.  For my previous 53mpg record there was a big stretch or the M4 from Reading to the M25 limited to 50mph while the road was being Smartened and widened to 4 lanes.  This time stretches of the M4 and M25 are now having works done again so soon after, to provide more refuge areas to the Smart motorways + there is a stretch of the M4 before Reading limited to 40mph for bridge strengthening works.  All in all about the same number of speed limited miles, I'd say.  The garage does note on its website that a poorly gassed aircon leads to reductions in fuel economy and my recent experience tends to confirm this - say 5% better mpg now + aircon is definitely a bit more effective.

 

 

Funnily enough with the warmer weather ours is noisy again.  The strangulated kind of sound that was there in hot weather last year (but had gone by the time the dealr took the car in) isn't there. but the whirring noise is really quite noticeable.

 

When it was in for service recently I did mention it but basically got a shrug when I picked it up (the focus was much more on finding the cause of the suspension knock, which it has to go bak - again - for).

 

They gave me a new Scala DSG courtesy car and I could hear the compressor in that too.

 

On 1.0 MPG - took daughter's 1 litre manual 2018 Ateca on 50 mile round trip to get the rear brakes replaced this week (after "Dad, it's making a scraping sound" at 6PM on Friday evening).  Mostly it's 70MPG dual carriageway and was quite amazed to see 50MPG on the trip MPG.  I thought the car drove drove amazingly well for the engine size - it did feel oddly flat up a long uphill slip road, but then I realised it was in 5th, not 3rd!    The compressor packed up on that a year or so ago, but it was never noisy, and it isn't now.  Felt colder than our car - I had to redirect one of the vents off my hand.

I was surprised it was set to low a/c profile - but I think that just varies the fan speed in auto.  I've seen suggestions it changes the strength of the a/c itself (so therefore the load on the compressor) but I couldn't tell any difference.

The man at the independent garage who did my aircon, told me previosly that the machine that does the regassing also can fault find other aspects of the aircon - seals etc. but whether it's a comprehensive check over including compressor etc., I don't know.

 

While writing he also said that he had trouble getting off some of the locking wheel bolts when swapping wheels over and had to use heat.  He advised replacing these with ordinary wheel bolts, as if I had a puncture, I'd have great difficulty undoing some locking bolts.  He went on to note that people don't steal wheels these days, particularly the 16" steel ones that I have.  Hope he's correct.

1 hour ago, croquemonsieur said:

He went on to note that people don't steal wheels these days, particularly the 16" steel ones...

 

I second that.