I have a 99 C-5 that all of a sudden is blowing ice cold air only on the passenger side. Low side is reading 30-32 lbs. The middle vent and drivers side vents blow only warm air. Anybody heard of this problem?
Possibly a door is stuck? Car runs great and cannot hear a vacuum leak. Thanks for any suggestions. Gary

 

Had the same problem on my 98....put about one can of 134a into the AC system and now it works great.....hope this helps



Jack

 

There has been a couple threads on this in the past week or so.

I am not ASE but I have my universal certificate of CFC qulification. I do commercial HVAC installation and start-up.

I posted in the other threads as well. My opinion from experience is; if you have cold air blowing out of a set of duct work, and hot air blowing out of a set of duct work, that is being fed from the same unit; you have a damper problem, temperature control failure, or duct issue.

If you had warm air coming out of all the ducts when in cooling, I would then look for refrigerant loss as being a factor.

Also if you do have refrigerant loss...find the leak before before you recharge the system, otherwise you will be doing this again down the road.

This is my opinion fron experience...I could be competely wrong on the diagnosis. Just trying to help. -Albino

 

I have a 98 with the same problem, cold on the passenger side warm on the driver side. I am planning on bringing it in for service, I will let you know what they find.

 

same here , low freon can cause that .
I added some freon and now both sides are cold.

 

I have a 98 that had the same problem. I reset the AC system to see if the vent motors had lost their home positions and got the same response (driver and center vents warm - passenger cool.) I then added 1 can of refigerant and we are now ice cold on all sides. One thing...make sure to test the system with the AC controls set to MAX 60 degrees. There are a bunch of sensors that impact how the system cools (Outiside, Cockpit,and Sunload sensors.) Let us know how it works out!

 

I am currently struggling with this as well, and thought I'd add my experience. I'm still trying to get a permanent solution.

In early March of this year my driver side was blowing warm and passenger ice cold. Searched the forums, found all the typical recommendations, tried everything that I could on my own (I'm no mechanic). Finally, I broke down and took it to a local shop.

Originally I went in telling them that I wanted the whole system evacuated, pressure tested, and filled with new freon (this is a common recommendation in the threads I found on the Forum). They talked me out of it, saying what I wanted was about $225, but they could just check to see if I was low on freon and top off the system for about $40. And, they'd put die in it to find leaks, should it start blowing warm again.

I opted for the $40 option to top off the system. It made the most sense to me at the time, because, if there was a leak, and I'm paying them $225 to evacuate the system and do a pressure test and they DO find a leak, I'm stuck with two options - tell them to not fix it right then (because we know how expensive AC repair can become), or tell them to go ahead and fill the leaky system and still pay $225 for something they'd have to come back and do again if more major repairs were needed.

I'm glad I just had them top off the system. They said I was about a pound and a half low. When I got the car back, both sides were blowing ice cold. I was happy.

Fast foward from March 11, to April 19th. The driver side starts blowing warm again, while the driver is cold - and I don't mean gradually started blowing warmer and warmer. We experienced a couple of 95+ degree days and the AC was performing fine. I parked the car in the garage on a Monday, had some out of town visitors and didn't drive the car again until Wednesday. So, I get up on Wednesday and drive into work, and don't really need the AC much, so I'm not sure if the driver side was blowing warm in the morning.

When I left work that day, the outside them was only 79 degrees. On the way home from work however, I couldn't get it to blow cold from the driver side. I have the climate control AC (I should have mentioned earlier), and I tried it set on various temps all the way from 60 up to 76 degrees and never could I get a variation in temp from the driver side, yet the passenger side did seem to be responding accordingly. Also this time, I am noticing that even the passenger side is not as cold as it should be but was still significantly colder than the driver side. I couldn't get to the shop on Wednesday, so I parked in my garage Wednesday night after tinkering with the AC controls all the way home from work (when it was 79 degrees). I park the car for the night, wake up on Thursday morning and I find a HUGE puddle of water on my garage floor. I couldn't pinpoint where it came from - I assume from my car, but I just couldn't determine. This was weird. So anyway, I figure that I'm not getting cold air from the driver side now because the system must have a slow freon leak, and I proceed back to the shop to have them look for die leaks a few days later.

One important fact to mention, that I don't believe I've seen in any other threads I've found. Like everyone else, the driver side blows warm (at least, not as cold as the passenger). Here's what I've noticed with mine that I have not seen others reporting - when I stop at a traffic light, after about 10 to 15 seconds, the driver side begins blowing cold just like the passenger side. This was happening to me back in March, and again 5 days ago when the driver side started blowing warm again. Even today, eventually the driver side will blow cold if I am stopped and idling long enough. As soon as the car starts moving, it returns to blowing warm only out of the driver side. I have noticed an overall drop-off in coolness coming from the passenger side this time (which does enforce the idea in my mind that this is a freon leak).

Anyway, back to my story. I returned to the AC shop to have them look for a leak. They said there was "signs of leakage at compressor and hose." They recommended, "R&R compressor, hose, accumulator, orifice, flush then evacuate and recharge system and retest operation." Estimated cost of $1450.00. I'm not an expert, but this recommendation sounds like a shotgun approach to fixing a problem they can't pin down. Anyone else agree?

Needless to say, I'm going to be getting a second and third opinion from other shops. But I was hoping someone on the Forum might have some recommendations/idea/opinions that might help me or anyone else in a similar situation.

 

I heard that if tou pull the fuse and then reinstall it it recalibrates your ducts.

 

Years and years ago I used to work on automobile AC systems and your problem sounds like the evaporator core is freezing up and causing warm air to be blown through he ducts. This is generally caused by low freon in the system. And in your case there is a fairly severe leak that has let freon escape since your fix on March 11. However, get a second opinion before spending $1450. A good shop can find the leak and repair it at far less expense.

To explain what I mean by freezing up, when the AC system is on, air is blown across the evaporator core (looks somewhat like a heater core) and through the auto ducts to cool the interior. During the AC process, that core sweats and the water drains through a drain tube beneath the car. In parts of the country with high tempatures and high humidity the system sweats more than in low humidity areas. When freon is low, the evap. core gets really cold, cold enough to form ice and block the air flow. That is why at a traffic light you begin to get cooling....the ice is melting to some extent because of pressure changes in the AC operating system. This allows cool air through the ducts again. This also explains the puddle of water on your garage floor after the engine is shut down. The ice melts from the evaporator core and drains out.

If you wait a few more weeks it is possible enough freon will leak out so that all you will get is warm air from all ducts.This occurs because the system has a safety feature that will shut down the compressor to protect it from damage. If the initial shop put in a die, you should be able to detect where the leak is. I thinks most dies used are red and are evident when examining connections and etc. Generally a leak is caused from a faulty or deteriorated O ring where parts are joined together. To replace an O ring it is necessary to evacuate and replace the freon. Hope this helps...good luck!

 

Have you performed a Manual Diagnostics: What trouble codes are you presenting regarding the A/C? This approach may help you determine the specific A/C problem at hand. Good luck to you.

 

v.vet's C5,

Thanks for the information. I consulted several local people & shops after post this message yesterday. All in all, I got pretty much the same information you have presented.

I'm happy to be hearing a bit of a concensus on this problem. Currently, I have the car in a shop for them to detect the exact location of the freon leak. Upon visual inspection, they believe it is the O-rings, but I will know more later.

Another person I talked to mentioned the change in pressure in the system when stopped at a light that could explain why it blows cold when stopped - again, same as your hypothesis.

Hopefully this will get resolved (inexpensively) today.

Again, thanks for your information. You gave all the answers in one post that I ended up collecting from 4 other sources! You da man!

 

Is there an easy way for a driver/owner to fill up the freon?? The local dealers here don't have anything open on the weekend for weeks.....and no courtesy car either....dont want to wait weeks to just fill it up! thanks...sorry to hijack.....

 

I'm Tommy I owned 03/50th Edition , when I completely stop, and than sofltenly step on the gas pedal , sometime I do heard a cracking sound come from outside (underneath of the seat) or on the rear wheels, pretty hard 2tell... Does anybody known what happen, and how 2fix it... thanks

 

Autozone or Wally-world have do-it-yourself kits.

I was told that when you start the fill process, which takes about 15 minutes per can, that you should immerse the can in hot water. It cools the can, which maintains the flow of freon into the system. Otherwise, it could take longer.