okay, i read the other recent post about the z28 having an a/c problem. my situation is somewhat similar, however, there are a few things different. i was driving home from work this morning when i made a turn and started noticing a burning rubber smell. well, since nothing good can come of this, i decided to check my gauges. rpm's were good, oil pressure was fine, voltage meter...crap. it was almost touching the 8. so i started shutting stuff down thinking it could be that my alternator could be going out. as soon as i turned off the a/c, the voltage shot straight back to normal. hmm. so of course, seeing that, i decided to try turning the a/c back on. power back down again. so now i'm riding with no a/c. great. so about 5 minutes later, i'm driving down the highway back to my house when of course curiosity drug me back to try turning it back on again. it works! so i decided to stop over at a friends house. but in order to do so, i have to pull a U turn. about a second or two into the turn, voltage shoots down and i loose power steering now (only for a second). so off the a/c goes again. i played with it a little more on the way to my friends house and it did cut off the power steering for a second again. but now it doesnt come on at all. and when i'm idling, i believe its the compressor squeeking pretty loudly. while sitting in the car at idle with the a/c turned on, it has like a surging feeling (to describe it the best that i can) throughout the car. not an rpm surge though. also, i'd like to note that i think that (if it is the compressor) has been squeeking for a few months now. mostly while i was turning the steering wheel (of course because of added stress). sorry to write so much, i just wanted to be thorough about what was going on. i think the compressor is going out. but i wanted to get some second opinions before i go dumping a bunch of money into the a/c system of my car. thanks for your help guys.
dave

 

Sounds like you might need some oil in the compressor. Get a can of R-134a and hook it up to the low pressure side of the system and tilt the can upside down to put the oil in.

 

Don't just go throwing in a can of R-134 with out checking the high and low side of the A/C lines. My A/C wasn't working too good a fews back and decided to put a can in that came with a guage to measure the low side only. When I was done the low side was around 35 like it should be. However, that did not fix the problem. I had to take the car into a service shop. They told me the low side was at the correct pressure but the high side was almost 400 psi and it should be around 230 or so.

You can ruin your compressor if you don't have the right equipment. I got lucky and that didn't happen.

 

okay, i'm not worried about over pressuring it. when i worked on it before, i took it to a good friend to have it vacuumed and filled w/ 2lbs. of freon. if i need to add anything to it, ill take it to him because he has both high and low pressure gauges. you think thats all it needs is oil? but it definitely sounds like a problem from the compressor, right?

 

I know you can ruin the compressor and you do have to have a manifold but I am not talking about filling it with freon Im talking about filling it with the oil. In everycan of freon there should be freon and oil for the compressor. It sounds to me like your oil is low in the system.