A Chill Interior Wind in October

[billroper]

Late last week, the refrigerant control valve for my Ford Five Hundred arrived. Today, I called the shop and they said to bring it over and they'd install it tomorrow. I figured that I could drop the car off this afternoon, so I did. I explained to the boss how the install worked, having studied the YouTube videos on the subject in the absence of actual written instructions. He thought it sounded pretty simple and handed it off to one of the shop mechanics.

So they evacuated the A/C system, removed the plate that covers the valve, removed the old valve and cleaned out the valve chamber, installed the new valve, replaced the cover plate, and recharged the freon in the system. And now the A/C produces cold air at idle. :) The whole repair cost just over $200 including the freon recharge.

I never would have figured this out if sweetmusic_27 hadn't been out shopping for a new used car which led to me doing some browsing about Five Hundreds. Some things just work out... :)

Comments

[sweetmusic-27.livejournal.com]

Yay, confluence of car events! This reminds me of an interesting "repair" on my Taurus that should have twigged me to the fact that there was a coolant leak - this summer, I thought I had an a/c problem, and took it to the shop, only to find that they had cured it by adding a gallon of engine coolant. $20 repair! The engine got hot and so the car turned off the air conditioning as a first step to keep the engine cooler. XD

[rinioth.livejournal.com]

Don't American cars have a low coolant warning light on the dash? Pretty much every European car does.

[sweetmusic-27.livejournal.com]

Yes, they do, but it wasn't low enough to trip the light, just low enough to warm up the car. XD

[billroper]

Smart on the part of the car; maybe not so much on the part of the shop. *sigh*

[rinioth.livejournal.com]

You say they cleaned out the valve chamber, I wonder if simply cleaning it out and replacing the old valve would have cured the fault?

[billroper]

No. The old valve gets clogged with debris that can't be removed; wiping down the chamber just makes sure that you aren't starting out with debris with the fresh valve.