Long story, here goes...

My air con hasn't worked since I got my car so a couple of months ago I tried one of those Halfords regas kits I previously used fine on my old Jaguar, and there was a hissing from the condenser, so I left it that it needed replacement.

Just got my car through the MOT, and decided I wanted the air con, so replaced the condenser (in that horrible storm on Tuesday for those in the South!) and took it today for a re gas at Mr Clutch, through groupon!

They phoned me at 11:57am to advise that there was no leaks and was all working as it should, I got all excited and picked the car up at 5pm.

Driving back and the air con didn't work at all, no colder than before so plugged in the iCarSoft whilst heading back to find the air con clutch wasn't engaging, but also the refridgerant pressure was 0 bar!

Got back to work expecting it to be a faulty pressure sensor, but put my pressure guage from the refill kit on the post and it was showing 0, no gas at all. A quick press with a screwdriver confirmed my fears, it was empty.

Now i'm not sure whether they didn't actually fill it, or it's all leaked out over the last 5 hours but it's still not working :@

Can't smell the gas in the car so i wouldn't have thought it was the drier end?! I've potentially got an air con engineer coming in the morning but wanted to know thoughts? I see Joe90 and Stan replaced the condenser and it all worked, didn't believe it would be that easy with my car  

yep mine was fairly easy..

my thoughts are that the gas shouldnt have expelled that quickly so i would take it back to the re-gasser and get them to have another go... ... - .- -.




Y. O. L. O.
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That was my thoughts, literally completely empty.

I've got a mobile guy who does repairs coming to have a look in the morning, hopefully they just didn't do it properly but it's never that straight forward with my life!

Makes me wonder if they actually tested it after?! 

For anyone who might be interested:

Air Con technician came out this morning, he did a leak test on the system which showed it was definetely loosing pressure, so he put in a dye and a gas.

The air con was all working fine, it was ice cold inside the cab so defo wasn't a compressor / drier problem, he spent around 20 minutes looking for the leak and found a pipe to be hissing.

He then vacuumed the system out again and put air in the system (might have been nitrogen?) and had a listen, touched one of the pipes and all hell broke loose, the air came flying out!!

The problem seems to be a break / split in the pipe. Will be replacing the pipe but it was the low side pipe that runs from the low side port to the bulkhead!

19D734A in the picture is the offending pipe, right next to the clip!!

Click image to enlarge

thanks for the update stephen...  ... - .- -.




Y. O. L. O.
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No worries, hopefully it will help someone in the future,

Whilst doing my research, I found that there aren't many common problems with air con except the condenser, so it was my luck to have another problem! I believe the pipe will be about £90, I will fit myself and get another service (discounted as second time ) and all should be good.

Now to chase Mr Clutch for a refund