Doing This Will Make Your Car’s AC Blow Sub-Zero

rev up your engines today i'm going to talk about a common car air conditioning problem and how you can fix it the problem is this say the passenger side is blowing cold air but the driver's side is not blowing cold air not an old car like this 94 celica it's a simple air conditioning system it doesn't have dual controls or anything it's got ac you turn it on or off then it's often a very simple problem just being low on refrigerant now this may be a 26 year old car but i've only had to add refrigerant one time now here's another broken ac compressor all air conditioning compressors leak somewhat over time the fan belt spins it spins the shaft the shaft has to have a seal on it if that seal was perfect it would run dry burn out and all the freon leak out they all leak a little bit of refrigerant and ac oil in order to lubricate that seal now in a case of toyotas it's often a very slow leak i mean i've only had to add refrigerant to this thing once in 26 years so it's a very slow link but when it leaks out enough it will affect the performance of your air conditioner and if you understand how air conditioners work it's totally logical the compressor compresses the refrigerant it's hot then it pushes it to the condenser in the front which get rid of hot air because hot air gets blown away then that gets sucked into the evaporator inside the dash that expands and gets cool air then it's sucked back into the compressor in an angular cycle and since most cars have the evaporator on the passenger side if you're running low on refrigerant the passenger side can still blow somewhat cool but by the time it makes it over to the driver's side it's not cool anymore so just being low on refrigerant can make it do that so if you know how to use ac gauges you can hook them up to see if you're low on refrigerant and if you are you can add some and if you don't you can just pay a mechanic to check it doesn't take five minutes and here's a money saving tip guys you're always trying to sell people's stuff say you're low on refrigerant they'll say oh wow your compressor is leaking you need to buy a new one before you spend a whole bunch of money if it's been years or if the system never has had any refrigerant added first just add some refrigerant i've done that on cars and sometimes they last five six years before they stop working again and then you just fill them up once every five or six years always start simple and work your way up and if you do add refrigerant if your system doesn't have any of that leak dye a lot of them are made with leak die but if it doesn't you could add a little bit of the leaked ion too so then when it finally leaks out you'll see the die coming out of the area and you'll know which one is leaking now many cars just have the single ac system even this relatively new matrix it's got a single system called on one side not on the other odds are you just low on refrigerant but if you have a more modern dual control system where you control the left side and the right side independently like this lexus then things can get complicated because here as you can see you can adjust the driver side from cold to whatever temperature you want and the same thing on the passenger side you can adjust that too now here of course you're dealing a level of sophistication all run by computers that can make your head spin but basically here's how it works the computer system takes the inputs there's temperature indicators inside and inside the dash are blend doors that open or close to a certain degree to make it whatever temperature you set it here now of course a lot of it's fantasy you put it on 69 degrees it's not going to stay exactly 69 but you can make it so one side can be as hot as you want in this case will go to hot or the other side can be as cold as you want and in that case the passenger side it would turn the duct the heater open using the actuators that opened the door so you'd have hot air blown here but on the driver's side it would only open the actuator for the ac system so cold air would come out here and you can guess what happens with computer actuated systems when they break i mean think happens this is a lexus they hardly ever break so i don't have to mess around with it but when they do break unfortunately you're gonna have to find a guy like me that has one of these really fancy computers to access that data to do bi-directional testing i'll show you how it works on this lexus well the beginnings these it just plugs into the data port plugged in then we put on the car and we're looking for stuff for the air conditioning system well the air conditioning system on this particular one is part of the body system so we'll push body it's got all kinds information like it's showing that the magnetic clutch is off now because the ac just the cycling in a second there now it's back on again you get all kinds of data you can analyze and that's various active tests that you can do too now of course if you don't have one of these fancy scan tools good luck trying to figure out what's wrong if one of those blend doors is breaking plus most of the time it'll be something like an actuator motor you got to take the whole dash of the car apart to access it repairs can easily top a thousand dollars on many cars these days if one of those stupid little doors breaks but here's another tip that might save you a ton of money let's say you're having electrical problems the first thing i advise all my customers to do is have the battery load tested and have the alternator load tested many auto parts stores do that free you can even buy a quality thing to test it yourself these days for 70 80 dollars you don't buy an expensive one like this medtronics this thing was over 800 when it was new today you can get 60 70 80 versions from other companies that work quite well realize that all computer control systems require a steady accurate supply of voltage if the voltage goes too low or too high squirrely things can happen if you're cold on one side hot on the other maybe there's just not enough power going to the other side always check the battery and alternator before you start spending a ton of money doing computer analysis and tearing the dash apart and here's another trick let's say this side's blowing cold and this side is blowing hot well the actual disrupting here sometimes just going whacking the dash really hard if it's a stuck actuator a lot of times they'll on stick i've had some customers that drove cars years that way we wouldn't call them one side to give a good whack and it would start working and realize those stupid doors are generally made out of plastic and they can stick as they age and if whacking works what the heck i have a common problem 2010 toyota corolla it's leaking coolant and the ac is not as cold as it should be so we'll start with the coolant leak we'll pop the hood put up the prop pretty obvious where the leaks coming from as we go in here there's like the stupid plastic crap it's cracked it's leaking out well shame on toyota in this case they did like bmw in 2010 they got the stupid plastic connect with the metal prong coming out that the little overflow hose goes into and it broke off because it's cheap plastic crap they would have made it some other way like they used to and not have the junction here it wouldn't have had a problem or if they would have made this out of metal instead of cheap plastic crap it wouldn't leak but they used cheap plastic crap so we're going to change that first first we'll get our drain pan and stick it under there so they don't get cooling all over the place it pollutes animals can drink it and get sick so put a little pan under there now this broke off so we got to take the clamp off you squeeze it put it up here the old piece is kind of stuck in there so we'll crunch it up a little and we can pull it out get bigger pliers squeeze the rubber hose and once we squeeze the one side we can pull off half of it the rest will go in the drain pan then we'll squeeze the other half pull that out of the way and then pull that off there and that comes out cheap plastic piece of crap as you can see the plastic bar cause it's junky plastic they would use metal you wouldn't have this problem but they did so you gotta buy another one it was an aftermarket part it actually seems to be more solid just slips on it's not rocket science when then goes in the other you push it in the pliers and grab it slide it over careful not to pinch your fingers then we do the other side and of course don't forget the little one first we'll push it on then we'll grab the clamp we'll stick it sideways that works better it's on there nice and tight and as you can see it doesn't really need that plastic crap it stays on there perfectly fine by itself then we just go to the radiator cap it's a cold engine so you don't have any worries and this is a toyota so you want the pink asian coolant you don't want to mix different kinds fell to the top then start it up turn the ac on full blast so the fan's blowing and then pour it as the air bubbles come up it might take a few minutes and don't forget to fill the reservoir too halfway right in here put the top back on now we're on to part two the owner said the ac isn't cold enough well we have it on full blast so let's stick this thermometer and see what the vent temp is so we'll go inside and yeah it's not as cold as it should be we check the van here you want it on full blast face and recirculate because recirculates the coldest with it's stuck in the top vent we're gonna wait about five minutes to see how cool it gets now it's 95 outside and it's only getting down to about 62 degrees now that's okay but here in texas that's not cool enough so what i'm going to do is evacuate the ac system and fill it up with a factory load baby's 10 years old realize all air conditioning systems leak some refrigerant because the end of the compressor it spins on your fan belt that's what runs it unless you have an electric one like a toyota prius but this is a normal one so it's spinning the pulley the pulley has a shaft the shaft spins the compressor well the shaft has to seal at the end of it to keep the refrigerant from leaking out but that seal has to allow a little bit of refrigerant and refrigerant oil to leak out to lubricate that seal because if it ran perfectly sealed it would run dry on the outside the shaft would spin burn out the sealant would all leak out so all cars leak refrigerant over time this particular one's never had any added it's 10 years old so it's a good thing to fill it up with a factory low now you could get one of those add cans and take a guess with the pressure reading but i do it the correct way i use my evacuation machine to take it all out then to put a factory load back in by wheat but how much weight well there are nice to put a sticker on here it says maximum 0.47 kilograms 1.04 pounds so we're going to put 0.47 kilograms back in now that's how you're not going to have a recycling machine like i have in the garage so you're gonna pay a mechanic to do this or like i said if you want you could try one of those little cans and add it and guess with the pressure but that's always a guess have a mechanic empty it all out fill it by a factory load that's the most efficient accurate way now i've already evacuated it out using the low side part so now we're going to add it in see the scale's at zero so we'll open it up and start letting refrigerant in going into the system right there and when we stop when it gets to 0.47 but we'll have to start it up because it won't fill without the compressor running turn on full blast again recirculate and as you can see more is going in we stop when it's point four seven it's getting closer there we go right on the money now take it for a spin see how cold it gets as we go inside just sitting here well what a difference not putting out like 34 degrees air big deal from 60. so don't always be disheartened if your ac isn't blowing that cold in this case lady took it to the dealer they wanted over a thousand bucks to fix it they were just trying to rip her off these systems do leak out over time no refrigerant was put in for 10 years if this thing lasts for years more just refill it again i looked all around i didn't see any big leaks anywhere i even put some dye in it i didn't see dye coming out anywhere odds are years from now this thing will still be blown cold they all leak a little bit over time if you gotta add it once every ten years be happy that's all you gotta do as nate toyota highlander the ac is not called the customer bought it about six months ago and the ac was a little bit cold but now it doesn't work at all so what am i assuming loss of refrigerant first let's hook up the gauge now there's low side and high side we're gonna hook up the low side first we get the low side the one that says l obviously l it's down there not the greatest place to access but i've seen worse i'll have to adjust this so it goes up now at least i can get it in the hole try to snap it on you gotta wiggle it and snap it on and in this case there's not much wiggling room there then we'll turn the handle that opens the valve up it's got 65 pounds pressure it should do something so let's turn it on start it up put it on ac full blast there we go full blast let's look at it we shut the ic off and as you can see now the compressor isn't spinning anymore we'll turn it back on make sure it's full blast and as you look down we can see it's spinning again so the compressor's spinning when we look at the gauge it's pretty much the same now we're going to check the high pressure too hook up the other gauge to the high side which of course says h snap it on now it's got 100 pounds and the other one has 60 pounds running so if we're lucky it could just be low on refrigerant when i go inside this side is cooler than that side this is outside air temperature this is a little cooler this is somewhat cooler and that's a lot cooler over there when you're low on refrigerant evaporators in there will often blow a little cooler on the other side so we're going to add some refrigerant let's see what happens the tank's here it's going to have refrigerant when i open it up and we'll watch the high side pressure here we go we're going to open it up we hope that the high side starts to go up some it's not going up all that much and as we can see on the low side the low side is way too high it should run maybe 30 35 the high side could run 180 190 the low side being that high there's serious problems now i'll check the cooling fans that fan splitted the other fan spinning so the fans are working if the fans don't work the pressures will get too high but these fans are working it's not the fans for some reason the low side is too high but the high side is too low but the compressor is still spinning i'm guessing on this baby the compressor's just worn out sucking and compressing correctly because the high side should be higher and if the high side doesn't compress it enough you won't get high enough pressure to cool it down the low side can stay too high because the compressor isn't sucking it in fast enough seems like a compressor failure to me but it could be a lot worse so i'm going to get my fancy scan tool out realize even in a 12 year old toyota the hvac system heating ventilation and air conditioning is all computer run so we're going to do a big scan and see if there's anything shows weird on that ac work used to be a lot easier but with these fancy compressors that a computer run a lot of things can go wrong that you need a really good computer to diagnose it with because i've had customers they just guessed and said oh i'm going to change the compressor because it's obviously not pumping right only to find out that the compressor was okay but it was all the stupid computers weren't controlling it correctly they wasted 800 bucks and didn't fix anything but nothing looks particularly bad from the data itself and as we look on the trouble codes unfortunately it doesn't have any now since this vehicle was purchased used and he said the ac never worked all that well we know nothing of the history of the vehicle there's no codes the data doesn't look bad the compressor's spinning but the pressures are all wrong so i'm going to suck all the refrigerant out with my recycling machine first then i'm going to fill it up with a factory load by weight and pray something good happens because if it doesn't at a minimum it's going to need a compressor and it might need a whole lot more now you really never know who's worked on this car what they've done well i'm evacuating the system what we're doing is we're making it neutral be completely empty no air no nothing if somebody put too much refrigerant in if they got air in the system if they use the wrong refrigerant they can all make them go bonkers so what i'm gonna do is empty out put in the factory load and watch the gauges and see what happens now as we can see here a maximum of 0.82 kilograms so we got the scale at zero we'll open it up and add 0.82 kilograms when this says 0.82 it's done so we'll go inside and start it up with the compressor running it'll fill up better start it up put the ac on full blast outside air then we'll watch the pressure as we can see this is already starting to come up which it should now the low side will always be higher while you're filling it up you want this to get higher and we stop when this says 0.82 and as you can see this is climbing let's pray some idiot got air in it or overfilled the system we'll see what's happening inside while it's filling up guess what that's cool and that's getting cooler let's hope it fixes it now i have patience because it can take a while until it's fully filled up and this is 0.82 realize i'm adding it as a gas the tank is right side up if i turn it upside down it would add it as a liquid which is much faster but it's also dangerous the liquid can get in there and bend the compressor you always want to add it with just the gas not the liquid yes it takes longer but it's more accurate and it won't damage anything yeah here we go point a2 i will take the hoses off first and put the caps back on first you open them up and you pop them put the top back on get it nice and snug and do the same thing down here don't burn your hands there's not much room that was put in a bad place i would have put it some push and put the low side cap back on get it nice and snug with your fingers so button it up and take it for a spin and i can already tell the difference that's cold that's cold even that's cold but we'll take it on a good 15 minute trip and lo and behold even though it's 95 degrees outside it's nice and cool inside on max cold so realize you got a car you don't know what anybody's done to the ac system never assume that it doesn't have air in the system the wrong refrigerant the wrong amount of refrigerant if in doubt you can't find any external things wrong like this the compressor was spinning there were no codes empty the system out they'll look back up with the factory load and see what happens in this case it's blowing freezing cold now so if you never want to miss another one of my new car repair videos remember to ring that bell [Music] you

Channel: Scotty Kilmer

Views: 416,716

Rating: 4.939806 out of 5

Keywords: auto, auto repair, car, car diy, car repair, cars, diy, how to, mechanic, repair, scotty kilmer, car review, ac blowing, ac system, ac system repair, air conditioning, car ac, car ac system, car advice, car life hacks, car maintenance, car problems, car tips, doing this, fix ac, how to fix car, how to fix car ac, how to fix car ac not blowing cold air, how to make ac colder in car, how to make car run better, how to repair car, life hack, life hacks, sub zero, sub-zero

Id: ybR815cPvH8

Length: 20min 0sec (1200 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 05 2021