Venture 2003 A/C troubles

[Christophe Salvain]

Hi listers.

My A/C went out suddenly. It was charged and worded fine. No compressor whinning or any bad issue before.
I stopped for 2 hours and when I came back no A/C, when I push the button the clutch doesnt engaged.
Checked :
- the a/c fuse is OK.
- the a/c relay OK (I swap it with the honk one).
But :
- I short the a/c relay with a jump wire : the A/C clutch engaged but a weird smell appeared after 15 sec. :-/.
Midas checked the charge there was ony 700g instead 1300g of R-134a. Even full charged nothing has changed.

Any advice is welcome.

Thx.

[dewaynep]

Didn't Midas find out why the compressor clutch isn't engaging? I would say the clutch gap probably got too big and slowly burned up the clutch coil from overheating.

[lesterl]

I'm with the clutch coil being burnt up.....

[Christophe Salvain]

Originally Posted by dewaynep

Didn't Midas find out why the compressor clutch isn't engaging? I would say the clutch gap probably got too big and slowly burned up the clutch coil from overheating.

Ok I was in Gibraltar, a British Colony in south of Spain, during a 3000 miles trip in Andalousia with 110F outside temperature and the A/C full time.
The compressor is 7 years old and is maybe now toasted.
I will order a new one on Rockauto.

Thank you.

[merc81]

The clutch can't be burned up if the pump runs when he by-passes the ac relay. There is NOTHING in the van that can detect a clutch problem. Therefore, the question becomes why would the AC relay not engage and power the clutch? It must be the case that the relay isn't being powered up because something in the AC circuit is showing a fault.
We are talking about micro relay #13 labeled A/C CLU right? Measure the clutch resistance to be about 2 ohms or less, & its OK. If it runs at all, then this is not the problem.

The refrigerant pressure sensor is a likely suspect. This is not simply an off/on pressure switch. It measures the pressure and informs the pcm of the level. If it fails, you will have a sudden lose of cooling. Its located on the dryer assembly down below the air intake duct on the driver's side behind the radiator. A good scan tool can read out the pressure measured, but then again the sensor costs about $30bucks and a recharge since it will open the system to replace it.

[lesterl]

He said it does start to smell funky after 15 seconds of it running, I was suspecting also that it was a burnt clutch coil.... But you do pose a good point. :-)

[Christophe Salvain]

Originally Posted by lesterl

He said it does start to smell funky after 15 seconds of it running, I was suspecting also that it was a burnt clutch coil.... But you do pose a good point. :-)

OK thank you guys. I 'll test the merr81 advices but i'm not sure the clutch is not dead : it smellt a hot plastic odor.

Feedback ASAP.