As I was driving to lunch yesterday with my A/C blowing full blast (on auto), the fans suddenly all stopped. I looked down at the external temperature display and it showed -21°F. It then changed back to 71°F (I don't know if this was correct or not) and the fans came back on to full blast. This didn't happen again until that evening, wherein I was driving home and the external temperature was just going up and then resetting to really low, the lowest I saw was -36°F, and any time it got really low, the fans would stop. I even tried switching to manual mode by adjusting the fan to high and the temperature to 60°F, and it would start blowing warm (presumably outside) air once the external temperature is detected as really low.
I had decided that it probably wasn't the external temperature sensor that was acting up, but then saw a post where another user had what looked like an actuator problem to a moderator, and his external temperature display jumped up to 140+°F once prior to this (thread
916072).
I am now curious as to whether or not anyone can tell me if the air conditioner would be affected by what the external temperature is detected to be. I have some other issues that lead me to think this is more likely part of a bigger central electrical/computer problem, but even if it's not, it seems to me like it would be related to a computer, as I would have expected the A/C to continue blowing (even if just outside air) in an attempt to continue to cool the cabin, but if the outside air temperature was low by at least 90°F, and the A/C stopped blowing because it thought the internal temperature suddenly dropped as well, I would think that temperature would be detected equally far off and the heater would have kicked on (while it was on auto, as it was most of the time). Unfortunately, I didn't think to watch the coolant temp in the DIC, but will be switching it there for the drive home tonight, but any thoughts would be appreciated.
Also, is Standard Motor Parts part# AX32 the correct part? I have seen it listed as "Air Charge Temperature Sensor," and "Air Intake Temperature Sensor," but I don't know if those are accurate descriptions, nor do I know if there is a separate temperature sensor for the external temperature display.