Hello,

The A/C in my wife's 98 Camaro V6 A4 is starting to struggle. The A/C system was recharged about 3 years ago (unfortunately, it was by her dad).

Since then, her A/C will sometimes freeze if run at the lowest fan speed with A/C on the highway. When the A/C freezes, the force of the air coming out of the vents is very slow and not very cold. To fix it, she simply changes it to outside air no A/C at the highest fan speed and in a few seconds the A/C is working again. It's not a big deal, just a minor annoyance.

So, that's not the problem I'm referring to, but I thought it would be good to know for background information. Also, the car has over 150k miles of mostly Florida driving, so the A/C has had more than it's fair share of use.

Anyways, on to the next event. About a year ago, the airflow coming out of the A/C would change from the upper vents to the lower vents when the engine was under load (acceleration, going up a hill, etc.). We took it somewhere and they replaced a vacuum diaphram. That fixed that problem.

A couple weeks ago, her car started to have decreased air flow out of the system (fan speed 2 feels like fan speed 1, etc.) and also the air wasn't as cold as it used to be. We took it somewhere to get it checked out. They said that everything looked good except for a vacuum diaphram (the same replaced a year ago?), which had collapsed. They replaced the diaphram, and the A/C seemed better at first, but it might have been our imaginations.

Right now, the fan speed is still slow. On the highway, the A/C gets cold enough, but at idle / in traffic it is not very cold at all. This doesn't make sense to us, because the A/C shop claimed that everything else look good related to the A/C system.

At the A/C's current performance level, my wife says she would be willing to tough it out through this summer but would want to either fix the A/C or get a different car by next summer.

So, based off all that information. What would you guess is the problem with the A/C? Also, depending on the expense of fixing the A/C, what's your opinion on selling the car vs. fixing it?

 

Make sure the drain for the evap is not clogged and is draining the moustire from it .

With it ildeing on a hot day with the A/C on . there should be a puddle of water under the passgers feet under the car on the ground and 5 mins ilding , ill check that first .

 

Since it's only been a couple weeks I'd bring it back, hopefully they'll give you a break on at least the diagnostics. Could be a refrigerant problem (too low, icing the evaporator) or even the blower motor (not enough RPM) - both will decrease airflow. Vacuum has nothing to do with the AC cooling, just which vent(s) is blows out of like you stated. Keep the car, just get the AC fixed - gotta be cheaper. My guess is it has a leak if they checked it and was fine, pressure is too low/borderline now and just icing the evaporator.