2005 4.0 V6 Air conditioning issue

I have about 50k miles on my Tacoma. When I'm driving, my A/C seems great.

When I'm stopped, either parked or at a red light, after about 30-45 seconds my A/C started to get gets warmer and warmer to the point that it barely blows cold at all after 2-3 minutes. It gets warmer on the passenger side first and then moves to the driver's side vents. After I start driving again, it gets cold pretty quickly. I recently added a small can of R134 to the system, as it was a little low. The gauges showed it to be in the normal range after, but this did not fix the problem.

I've also noticed that the A/C compressor seems to cycle on and off frequently while I'm at idle (I cannot tell what it's doing while I'm driving).

I read some similar threads on here and one of them said to check the condenser fan, but as far as I could tell the truck just has the one clutch fan. I'm frustrated and though I don't want to pay for A/C work, I'm tempted to take the truck somewhere to have it looked at. If anyone has anything I can check out first I'll gladly do that. Thanks.

 

bump?

 

get somebody to inject dye into it and refill the freon and then when its starts doing that again take it back in

 

Well if you think about it, when you're moving your forcing a lot of air through your condenser coil- it sounds possible that your condenser may be dirty, an when you're not getting the CFM you get while you're in motion, your system's head pressure may be rising. Take a look and see what your coil looks like?

 

Don't do that. Ever. You could flush the system 50 times with dry nitrogen and NEVER remove that dye, and it's horrible for your system. If you plan on doing any leak checks, go to home depot and buy some soap bubbles (which are used for gas leaks).

 

we do this all the time to our systems and no side affects and if a leak occurs then you know where its coming from

 

I'm sorry, but the dye is a non-condensable, and adding it to your system reduces the capacity, wether you notice it or not. Soap bubbles have absolutely NO adverse effects on your system and are a far more accurate leak pin pointer. That's what I and all of my co-workers use- we work for the largest commercial air-conditioning and refrigeration company in central florida.

I've literally seen a system flushed 20 times with dry nitrogen and STILL have tons of the dye pouring out. It's bad news. I'm just trying to steer you in the correction direction.

 

yes i know that that why you add dye when your recover your system and see if it holds vacuum also. usually when you recover you recover pag 46 or whatever is in your system. and you add back the pag with the dye in it so you dont reduce capacity. and im not saying your wrong if the bubble trick works do it. if you cant get to some lines use dye the right way. and my instructors said it doesnt matter that the dye stays in there

 

Thanks for all the suggestions. I'll take a look at the condenser and if I don't see anything, I guess I'll have to get it looked at (that was my next step, but I wanted to get some opinions first).