1997 Buick LeSabre Custom A/C Question

[equidlady]

My a/c blows air just fine, but the temp is barely cool to hot. Freon was out and replaced but it has not made a difference. Before this happened, the a/c worked really well. Any suggestions? Thanks in advance for your help.

[spinne1]

Most likely your "freon" leaked out because of some failure and you no longer have any coolant to cool with. One way to check is to turn your ac on and check to see if your compressor engages. If it does not, you either are low on refrigerant or you have some other problem such as wiring, circuitry, or a faulty sensor or switch or clogged orifice tube, etc. If you ARE low on freon then refilling it likely will not work because it will just leak out again! You must repair the leak(s) before refilling or it will not work. You could have a leak in the joints, a broken evaporator (a crack could have formed thus ruining it), a leaky condenser, a leaky compressor, etc. Your compressor could have failed and if so, it could have left metal shards throughout your system ("black death"). To find out if this happened, remove your orifice tube and see if it is black and clogged with metal particles. Note that you should not open your system unless it has been evacuated of its refrigerant (unless you are positive that it has all leaked out--you must test to find this out.)

If you don't have test equipment, go to a shop and pay them to:

1. Attempt to locate a leak.
2. Evacuate the system.

After it is evacuated, you can buy parts yourself and fix it. I would suggest as a minimum:

Compressor (ONLY if bad)
Accumulator (always replace if you open the system)
Orifice Tube (ditto)
O Rings (green for r164A)
Nylog (a sealant for all your green o rings--don't do the job without it!)
Other parts as needed (visually inspect the condensor and evaporator (the evaporator is NOT readily accessible and requires some work to dig it out))

You also need to flush the system, put it together, then evacuate all the air and moisture with a vacuum pump (you can rent them from some Advance Auto Parts stores.)

If you never plan to work on ac systems again, just take it to a shop for a complete repair. It will likely cost $600-$1000 depending on what's wrong. If you are extremely lucky it will something simple and inexpensive, like wiring or a fuse.

[Type_0]

i also have a 97 lesabre. and around 98K my water pump started to go. it was just sucking down coolant, taking a verry long to time to get the air to get to any temp but neutral(of course this happened in the middle of a Nwe England winter) and then eventualy went, shredded the belt, that i had just relpaced the week before due to another bearing on the belt that went. cost around $300 to have it done in the shop i purchased the car from.

[HotZ28]

Originally Posted by Type_0

i also have a 97 lesabre. and around 98K my water pump started to go. it was just sucking down coolant, taking a verry long to time to get the air to get to any temp but neutral(of course this happened in the middle of a Nwe England winter) and then eventualy went, shredded the belt, that i had just relpaced the week before due to another bearing on the belt that went. cost around $300 to have it done in the shop i purchased the car from.

Definitely an unfortunate set of circumstances here, but I fail to see any correlation between a water pump failure and an AC system leaking Freon?
BTW, good post spinne1!

[Type_0]

i saw "freon" and thought coolant, which was my problem. which now i look at andknow its 2 different things. kinda new at this, sorry.

[HotZ28]

Welcome to AF! Your post is alright and don’t worry about it; however, we do try to keep the threads on the subject!