1994 Mercury Villager A/C Compressor

SETSUKUN

MEMBER
1994 MERCURY VILLAGER
201,000 MILES

I believe my A/C Compressor clutch went bad, so when I tried to start my car with the A/C on inside the car, starting it would lead to it squealing really loudly and dying pretty instantly. Leaving the A/C off fixed this. Now I'm having the same problem but the A/C is off, I've even tried removing the A/C relay to see if that would fix it, no luck. I think the A/C Compressor pulley is jammed making it kill the engine. I can keep the accelerator down and it'll stay on. So my question is, can I remove the belt that I THINK is only running the A/C Compressor and would that break/make anything go bad because of it?

1 Reply

CARADIODOC

MECHANIC
33,871 POSTS

It's actually the compressor that's locked up, not the clutch. If the clutch locks up, the compressor just can't be turned off and it will run all the time. If the clutch fails to lock up when it's supposed to, the compressor just won't run at all. If the belt only runs the compressor, you can remove it and drive like that. Besides obviously losing the air conditioning, you will lose it in the defrost mode. The AC runs in defrost mode to remove humidity from the warmed air before it blows it onto the cold windshield where it would condense and cause fogging. Most of the time you won't even notice that.