No cold air on AC

BABAGANOOSH

MEMBER
2010 HONDA CIVIC
1.8L
4 CYL
2WD
AUTOMATIC
150,000 MILES

Wonder what I am up against with this. We were on the road, AC was on, working fine. My wife said she adjusted the blower speed and then it started blowing warm (bad coincidence I think?).

Doing some checking (and I know enough to be dangerous) and we have a 2013 Honda Civic with working AC.

I checked relays and fuses - they look good.

Turning on the AC on the 2010, the second radiator fan does go on. The compressor clutch doesn't start spinning.

Compressor clutch spins freely on both cars with engine off.

It was blowing cold before this (and I read somewhere, if the radiator fan turns on = Freon pressure okay) so not Freon?

I found a 2006 - 2009 honda civic wiring doc on line. There's a thermal protector on the compressor? I see a 3 wire connector on the starter with wires going down to compressor (on both cars). Opening that connector on the working car stops the compressor, so that's the feed to compressor?

leads 1 and 3 on compressor side of connector both cars have low / no resistance

with that connector connected, on the working car, pins 1 and 3 are hot when compressor is on. Pin 3 is hot when compressor is not running, pin 3 is 0 when compressor is running.

So it seems the compressor is getting power.

a) is there anything short of replacing whole compressor doable? Replace / fix clutch? How do you diagnose clutch is the issue?

b) how much money would you put into this? It's a 2010 civic LX. Looking on ebay, these go for $3,000.00 to $3.500.00. And mine has 150,000 and scratched up front bumper / broken headlight plastic.

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3 Replies

KEN L

MASTER CERTIFIED MECHANIC
47,702 POSTS

If the compressor is getting power and not on it means the clutch coil has gone out, which most of the time it is better to replace the compressor. Here is one from Amazon for $270.00 and a guide to help you change it out:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B009IX46N2/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=2carprcom-20&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=B009IX46N2&linkId=8f4657ee55f26a36cac8326240ffdcff

https://www.2carpros.com/articles/replace-air-conditioner-compressor

and

https://www.2carpros.com/articles/re-charge-an-air-conditioner-system

Check out the diagrams (below). Please let us know if you need anything else to get the problem fixed.

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Thursday, May 23rd, 2019 AT 1:48 PM

BABAGANOOSH

MEMBER
2 POSTS

Thanks. That's way above my skills. : ) The car works now, just without AC. I am thinking I could make things worse when you start dealing with the serpentine belt, etc.

I want to ask around at garages and see if any of them would want to do the replace coil only work. Would you think places would be interested? Yeah, it could be more than a failed coil. And they could have issues putting parts onto an old compressor / mess up the serpentine belt also?

Then either I have an undrivable car or spend the $1,000.00.

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Thursday, May 23rd, 2019 AT 6:21 PM

KEN L

MASTER CERTIFIED MECHANIC
47,702 POSTS

It looks like you can bypass the compressor and just use a shorter belt. here is the belt diagram. remove the belt and take it to the auto parts store and start getting shorter belts, get like five belts this will narrow down the size just return the ones that are the wrong size. Here is the serpentine belt diagrams and a guide so you can see what you are in for:

https://www.2carpros.com/articles/replace-serpentine-belt

Check out the diagrams (below). Please let us know what belt size you find that works.

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