Dodgy aircon on new vrs se

[Guest]

I' m not happy with my aircon and would appreciate any opinions / suggestions as to what might / could be going on. I have done a full search and read through the threads but this hasn't given me what I'm looking for.

The bottom line is that I've moved from an 06 VRS to a new SE one and my new aircon simply doesn't feel as though it does the job as well as the old one. The problem is most apparent on a day like yesterday or today when the car reads the outside temperature as 25c or above. At these times, the air con fails to reduce the cabin temperature to the selected temperature. At these times I have to run the system on the minimum temp setting with max fan just to bear the cabin. On my old model, I was generally able to select 18c and stick the fans up high to make the cabin feel comfortable before turning the fan back down to 1 or 2 to maintain temp. On a cool day this fault is not so apparent and the car is generally able to reduce cabin temperature to a comfortable one.

The air coming out the blower seems to be 'cold' but I'm not sure whether it's right or not. I have recently sat in another se for a short period of time and the air coming out the blowers on that was similar to mine.

I'm stumped to be honest. Could I be going mad and imagining it? Can the quality of the aircon system vary from car to car? If this is true, how good / bad would the aircon have to be before it could be deemed to be in / out of acceptable working limits?

It has had one visit to a dealer already as part of some other problens and the dealer was particularly unhelpful. They said it blew cold air out and that was satisfactory and made a whole host of excuses which bascially translated as "we can't be arsed". I had to push to ask if any fault codes were found, but tbh I'm not convinced they even ran it through the diagnostic checks. I asked if the system could have deteriorated if the car has been left standing around for a long period of time prior to delivery to which the very knowledgeable mechanic replied that this would have been imposible due to all se vrs models being shipped directly from the facotry to the dealer upon order(!) and therefore never being left sitting around.

It's in with my regular dealer this tues who I hope will take the problem more seriously. However, I sympathise with the mechanics to some extent as unless they can sit in the car on a hot day, it may be hard with them to sympathise with the problem.

[bryand]

If your blower is producing 'cold' air then it will be difficult to convince the dealer that the aircon is faulty.

How about the volume of air?

Your new vRS could have better door seals than the old one, so the car is better sealed. If stale air can't get out, there's no room for incoming cool air so there is less volume of cool air. Have you tried dropping a rear window by a centimetre or so to provide an outlet and then exercised the aircon? Is the boot empty? - the stale air vents are in the spare wheel well, and carrying something which smothers the boot carpet could stop air getting out.

[fordfan]

Air con will typically blow coldest through the vents at about 6 deg C, have you measured yours?

[TDi Vrs]

get a temp gauge and check how cold its gettin

[Guest]

Ok, some useful things to consider there ... many thanks. I've had another play with it today and despite still not feeling 'right', it does seem to have coped with the hot weather today (reported outside air temp of 27.5c) a little better. However, it might just have felt that way because I angled the vents in my face!

I did buy a thermometer and it went down to 25c in the cabin after about ten mins of driving / use. The fan was on 2 and the temp select was on 18c.

The issue of seals is one I hadn't thought of. I do have a folded blanket / some reusable carrier bags in my boot, but these don't really cover the whole of the boot floor. I could try removing these to see what it does. I haven't tried dropping the rear windows for a sec, although at times I have lowered the front windows upon first getting in the car until the air being pumped in becomes cool. I then stick the windows back up and wait for the cabin to cool. This hasn't has a huge effect on the perfromance tbh.

I did hold my thermometer up to the fans if that's what you were suggesting Fordfan and the reading dropped to 18c. I guess this shows that it is pumping cooler air in than the air temperature is in the cabin, but that it is still struggling to reduce the overall temperature.

Again, I may be going mad but, when playing with fan settings today it did cross my mind that this car doesn't seem to be blowing as much air inas the previous one. 4 used to be bloody hard and one used to still be satisfactory to maintain a temp, now I seem to find myself using two a lot. It's not a major difference though, however there does seem to be some slight mechanical rattle from inside the centre fans on occasions also.

I guess it would be useful for another vrs owner to stick their aircon on min and see how cold they can get their cabin so that I can try and work out how close mine is getting to the norm.

I wonder also if someone with a little more insde knowledge of what dealers can do could give me some idea as to what tests I can realistically expect them to do on the car in order to ascertain whether my aircon performance is satisfactory or not. I know they can plug the laptop in and look for codes, but is there much else that they can do if this comes back negative?

Many thanks guys.

[bryand]

If the air flow is less than your last car, how about checking the pollen filter for a blockage/leaves/dirty rag etc?

[Dr Zoidberg]

If 25' is the best it can manage to cool the car to , then something is very wrong.

Hopefully a more helpful dealer can be found

[Guest]

If 25' is the best it can manage to cool the car to , then something is very wrong.

Hopefully a more helpful dealer can be found

That's what I thought ... could be the 75p thermometer from Wilkinsons's though.

[Guest]

If the air flow is less than your last car, how about checking the pollen filter for a blockage/leaves/dirty rag etc?

Ok thanks, where would I find that then?

[bryand]

It is a vertically mounted panel filter accessed from the front passenger footwell. The filter housing has a ribbed plastic bottom visible if you look under the glovebox and towards the centre of the car, and the filter is held in place by two sliding clips. A search on 'pollen filter' should yield some photos.

[rum4mo]

I' m not happy with my aircon and would appreciate any opinions / suggestions as to what might / could be going on. I have done a full search and read through the threads but this hasn't given me what I'm looking for.

The bottom line is that I've moved from an 06 VRS to a new SE one and my new aircon simply doesn't feel as though it does the job as well as the old one. The problem is most apparent on a day like yesterday or today when the car reads the outside temperature as 25c or above. At these times, the air con fails to reduce the cabin temperature to the selected temperature. At these times I have to run the system on the minimum temp setting with max fan just to bear the cabin. On my old model, I was generally able to select 18c and stick the fans up high to make the cabin feel comfortable before turning the fan back down to 1 or 2 to maintain temp. On a cool day this fault is not so apparent and the car is generally able to reduce cabin temperature to a comfortable one.

Just a thought - did your last car have manual A/C and this have auto A/C ? If that is the case you will find that whereas it is said you can freeze your nuts off with manual A/C, with auto A/C it will just try to reach the desired temperature and you can not force it to work overtime and freeze the car - as I said at the beginning, just a thought!

[ScoobyChris]

I think both the vRS and vRS SE have "climatic" climate control so both will be trying to lower the temperature in the cabin manually (ie not controlling the vents and fan speed).

Interestingly, the '07 Golf MkV I had as a hire car recently also had seriously weak fans that were unable to shift the cold air around the cabin. Hopefully this isn't a new VAG design feature

Chris

[Chris GB]

I thought the idea of the Fabia vRS air con temperature adjustment was to set the VENT temperature, not the cabin temperature? On this basis, if you set 18 C then the air from the vents comes out at 18 C. Given that the car is being warmed up by the sun, the temperature difference from 18 C to say 25 C is nowhere near enough to overcome the heating effect of the sun.

Mine has behaved similarly from new. It produces air from the vents at the set temp or close to. Run it on full cool to fight the heat. Could be mine is wrong as well of course.

Chris

[Guest]

I thought the idea of the Fabia vRS air con temperature adjustment was to set the VENT temperature, not the cabin temperature? On this basis, if you set 18 C then the air from the vents comes out at 18 C. Given that the car is being warmed up by the sun, the temperature difference from 18 C to say 25 C is nowhere near enough to overcome the heating effect of the sun.

Mine has behaved similarly from new. It produces air from the vents at the set temp or close to. Run it on full cool to fight the heat. Could be mine is wrong as well of course.

Chris

A good theory except that it goes against my percecption of how my 06 vehicle performed. i'd be interested to know what plate your vrs is on though.

[Guest]

I think both the vRS and vRS SE have "climatic" climate control so both will be trying to lower the temperature in the cabin manually (ie not controlling the vents and fan speed).

Interestingly, the '07 Golf MkV I had as a hire car recently also had seriously weak fans that were unable to shift the cold air around the cabin. Hopefully this isn't a new VAG design feature

Chris

yes, that' what i thought as well.

Interesting whay you say about the gold fans though, setting 1 on my new car is pathetic and does naff all tbh!

[Guest]

It is a vertically mounted panel filter accessed from the front passenger footwell. The filter housing has a ribbed plastic bottom visible if you look under the glovebox and towards the centre of the car, and the filter is held in place by two sliding clips. A search on 'pollen filter' should yield some photos.

thanks, I shall try to find this and see what happens!

EDIT!!! Ok, I've had it out and it seems clean to me, esp for a new vehicle etc. Onto the next idea I guess!

[rum4mo]

I thought the idea of the Fabia vRS air con temperature adjustment was to set the VENT temperature, not the cabin temperature? On this basis, if you set 18 C then the air from the vents comes out at 18 C. Given that the car is being warmed up by the sun, the temperature difference from 18 C to say 25 C is nowhere near enough to overcome the heating effect of the sun.

Mine has behaved similarly from new. It produces air from the vents at the set temp or close to. Run it on full cool to fight the heat. Could be mine is wrong as well of course.

Chris

I think that you will find that with manual A/C the vent temperature will be as cold as the fridge system in its current state, can cool the outside at the demanded fan setting - ie as I said already it will work to its full capacity, the monitor for the demanded cabin temperature should determine when air blending starts to raise the delivered air temperature as the demanded setpoint is approached.

[ts100]

My 06 Octavia 2.0 Fsi Elegance has an air con problem too. The dealer has been quite helpful and acknowledged it isn't working. The test apparently is to hold your fingernail over the vent. If the air con is working rather than just a slightly cool blower, then you should feel a tingle in your nail.

The engine management download revealed nothing on the first visit and the dealer regassed the system to no avail.

[ScoobyChris]

The test apparently is to hold your fingernail over the vent. If the air con is working rather than just a slightly cool blower, then you should feel a tingle in your nail.

That's not very scientific :P Most garages use a temperature probe

Chris

[Guest]

That's not very scientific :P Most garages use a temperature probe

Chris

Yeh ... what will they do if we don't get a tingle but it gives no fault codes then?:confused:

[nickl0]

I can't really offer any assistance or help, but in the hot weather over the past few days I can leave my blowers on 3 or 4 and set the temp to minimum and after a 1 hour drive there was steam slightly noticable when I was breathing. It was very chilly in my car, just the way I like it. Mine's a 54 plate vRS with 17k on the clock, and the AC is turned on all the time. Suffice to say, I'd say yours was faulty.

[Guest]

I can't really offer any assistance or help, but in the hot weather over the past few days I can leave my blowers on 3 or 4 and set the temp to minimum and after a 1 hour drive there was steam slightly noticable when I was breathing. It was very chilly in my car, just the way I like it. Mine's a 54 plate vRS with 17k on the clock, and the AC is turned on all the time. Suffice to say, I'd say yours was faulty.

That's a useful comparison, thanks. Mine certainly wouldn't do that. I really don't think there's much difference in mine between say 10mins driving and 30mins driving.

Any ideas what could be 'wrong' if it doesn't produce fault codes though?:confused: