No AC in cold climates..

Hi all, this past weekend I was up in Tahoe to go snowboarding. When I got back to my truck I couldn't get the AC to work, which meant my defroster didn't defrost. I verified that the compressor was not kicking on and that the fuse was good. It was snowing hard so I didn't do much more than look at those two things and used the heater to try and defrost.

But now that I'm back in sunny Berkeley, I tried again and the AC works completely fine. I'm a bit stumped here. Maybe it has something to do with the refrigerant pressure? Perhaps the cold weather affected the pressure in the line (i.e. too low for the compressor to turn on?).

Not sure what to do as I can't easily reproduce the issue. Any ideas would be appreciated.

 

Put your gauges on see what your pressure reads .

Temperature and Pressure are related.

Do you know just what the air temperature was??

It could also had something frozen hard to know.

Remember with the Defrost The Compressor does cycle .

 

The temperature must have been 30 or below, and the truck sat and got snowed on all day long.

I have one of those AC recharge cans with a gauge and I hooked it up to read the pressure. The pressure reads TOO HIGH!

Thing is, this isn't the first time I've had this happen. It was "too high" when I got the truck, so I took it to a shop for a flush/recharge. At the time, the AC wasn't very cold and seemed to be fine after that service.

But now, the pressure is too high again. Any idea what would cause the system pressure to increase over time?

 

This is a question for @keaker.

 

About the only thing would be a restriction in the system tripping the high pressure switch .

Not real sure I would have to much faith in a gauge on a can.

 

@keakar

 

Thanks, I always get those tags things messed up.