AC blowing warm air

It’s going to 100 degrees today in NY! And my AC is blowing warm air in my 2005 Tacoma.

I recently purchased it used, so not too familiar with the vehicle history. My dad had it for a while and didn’t say anything about the AC not working, but as of yesterday it’s just blowing hot air.

I don’t hear anything come on or the engine idle change when I hit the AC button (solid green light, not blinking). Could someone point me to where the compressor is so I can see if it’s coming on?

My local autozone didn’t have the AC clutch relay to try replacing it, is it possible to test it out with one of the other relays on the engine bay fuse box? They appear to have different markings on them, so I didn’t want to mess anything up.

Otherwise my next step is to try and DIY recharge.

I’m just hoping there isn’t a massive problem!

Thanks in advance for the help

 

Could just be the freon is low. During the winter months the rubber seals contract allowing the freon to leak out.

 

I’m happy to give the recharge kit o bought from Autozone a shot, hopefully people don’t have bad experiences with these things. Looks pretty straightforward.

 

Read up on some others experience before doing that. From what I read its not a great idea. You can overfill, and these arent very accurate. You can wind up paying hundreds of dollars to fix the system you damaged in the process. I just had mine done professionally for $88. They vacuumed all the freon out and refilled for that. Then you know its done right. DIY will cost at least $32 and its a roll of the dice.

 

I gave it a shot, seems ok, and I kept it to the lower end of the pressure range. Patience is not a virtue of mine, but you’re probably correct in that i should have looked for the professional option in that price range. On a quick search I did to see a disaster story but totally appreciate how it could go wrong.

 

This ^^^^^ is the proper way to handle this. And them if your system gets low again you will know that you need to make additional repairs.

 

There are several points to be made here. You have a leak that needs to be repaired, there is no argument there. The refrigerant doesn't just disappear, the seals do not shrink and allow leakage during the winter and then seal back up in the summer. Those magic cans may seem to work, but the system contains pag oil to lubricate the compressor. When you leak refrigerant you also leak out the oil. When you recharge with those cans you are not replacing the lubricant, just the refrigerant. Can you spell compressor failure?

Take it and have it repaired properly before the compressor grenades and you will be much happier.

 

This guy is right, refrigerant carries the oil through the compressor and if its not flowing properly due to low refrigerant, your compressor could lock up and destroy itself. Also if you have too much refrigerant your pressures will be higher than the compressor was designed to run at and could blow out seals and cause a leak. I'd have a certified A/C professional take a look at it, it'll be easier for him to fix one problem than multiple due to trying and fixing it yourself. It'll save you some money in the long run.

 

I love reading threads full of bad AC advise with a single shread of common sense being completely ignored because people want to be cheap. @Jimmyh gave the only bit of good advise in here

 

And @CouchlessPotato gave some good advice.

 

Hmm, I had mine redone last year. In the meantime while I saved money for repairs I just drove fast with the windows down

 

Small leaks generally do not lose much oil, if any. Big rupture of a high side hose, yes. Normally no oil should be added, because you don't know how much to add. Too much oil makes for bigger problems. Been there, seen that. Labor intensive to completely drain all oil from the system, then replace oil in the compressor, evaporator, and condenser. Just sayin'.

 

I misunderstood then.

Not doubting you a bit, but I was always informed that when you evacuate the system after a repair you have to add the correct amount of oil and refrigerant.

I stand corrected. And Thanks for the clarification!

 

So the charge didn’t take unfortunately. No cold air this morning and PSI at 10 last night (after charging to 30 psi in the morning). Ah well, guess I need to take it in.

 

There is small radiator for your A/C in front of your larger engine radiator. Road debris could have punctured it causing a leak of your R134 refrigerant. This a happened to my Tundra.

 

You do know that pressures can change based on ambient air temperature

 

Charging to pressure doesn't work, you need to charge it by the weight of the refrigerant added. Its better to take it in.

 

When you recover refrigerant from the system, a small amount of oil will come out, usually less than an ounce. A good practice is to measure the oil you removed from the system and put that same amount back in. You don't want to add too much, if you don't know how much oil came out, maybe add half an ounce or none at all.

 

The OP is just going to keep using suicide cans until he ends up killing his ac system then complain that it will cost him 1000 bucks to fix it.

 

As I said, the process of replacement needs too much attention and time, which seemed vastly complicated to me. Plenty of details must be considered, and it confused me a lot. I tested and checked everything, but it didn't work anyway. That was an awful experience, man, driving for about 10 hours in a horrible heat. That is always like hell to me when air conditioning is out of service. The same situation happened to me when I moved to Singapore. I almost fainted when I spent a couple of hours in a stuffy room without conditioning. I set AC all over my house, and now I enjoy this sweet coolness even when outside weather leaves much to be desired. I try to maintain my AC in the best condition. Thank God, I came across these guys, who did the high-quality work at a very affordable price Here, I hope they will help you too https://www.airconservicing.org/why-choose-us/