Thread: Air-con. Whats wrong with it now???

Guys,
Had a weekend away with the mrs this weekend, air-con on full.

Stopped about 2.5hrs down the freeway to let the dog have a stretch and noticed A LOT of water dripping from the area around the FRONT of the passenger side wheel.

From a distance my first thought was the aircon drain behind the wheel - NO.

Lifted the bonnet to find one of the Aircon pipes from the compressor with ice on the outside of the pipe. The pipe was iced from the compressor back to about the filling valve, behind that to the bulkhead was wet with condensation. The other pipe from bulkhead to compressor was hot to touch. The dripping water was the ice melting!

Yesterday we stopped off at Macca's for a quality meal and between stopping and driving away there was about 20 feet of water trail from the car to the nearest road drain!


A weekend of driving later and the air-con still appears to be working So, Im assuming Ive not lost any gas.

The drain plug is not bunged up because water drips from there like it always has.

The car has never leaked this amount though, so something must be amiss but i don't know what!

One of the pictures shows which pipe is getting iced, this is after about 5 mins of running this morning.

The other picture shows where the 2 airocn pipes go into the bulkhead. The closest one to the camera with the paper tag on it (smaller diameter) is the hot one, the one furthest away / driver side & larger diameter is the COLD one!

Any ideas??


Thanks.
Jon

Put some closed cell pipe insulation over the pipe and it will reduce the pipe's exposure to the humid air.

Remember your basic physics, as the temp rises the air's ability to hold water vapour increases, if the humid air is exposed to a surface, particularly a metal surface, which is below the dew point of the air, the water vapour will condense to liquid water or ice, depending upon the temp of the exposed surface.

If there is too much ice formation on the outside of the system and reduced cooling performance it may indicate formation of ice crystals inside the system, which may require the replacement of the drier. (Some people call it a filter)

(But I like the idea of using it to add extra cooling of the turbo intercooler system.)