Air con not cold, just regassed and compressor is spinning

Hi all, I recently bought a mk3 (pre facelift) Clio Dynamique 3d which has non-functioning air conditioning. There is no change in the temperature of the air at full blast and the lowest temperature setting with the AC on or off.

The light comes on when you push the AC button and you can feel the engine ramp up at idle as the compressor clutch kicks in (I also got out and visually inspected it spinning/not spinning).

After turning the fans to speed two, you start to hear a constant squeal/hiss appearing to come from inside the cabin (blower motor maybe?) that turns on and off with the air conditioning. It's loud enough to be just barely noticeable when the blowers are at their max speed of 4.

At first I thought it might be that the refrigerant levels were too low, so I bought a kit off Amazon and used the inbuilt gauge to see that it was at normal levels (~35 psi).

Before I read up and realised you're not supposed to do this, I drained all the refrigerant, and topped it up to the same psi using the new kit. This has failed to make the air any colder.

Does anyone have any idea what the issue could be, and how I could go about fixing it without going to a mechanic? I'm leaning towards a blocked pipe but I'm almost clueless.

Take it to an aircon specialist for diagnostics. Not expensive

The system needs a specific weight of refrigerant in to function, not pressure (yes it relies on pressure to function but pressure alone won't make it work properly) Those kits shouldn't be sold in my opinion. £40-60 to get it vacuumed and refilled with the correct amount.

Chrisgti6 said:

The system needs a specific weight of refrigerant in to function, not pressure (yes it relies on pressure to function but pressure alone won't make it work properly) Those kits shouldn't be sold in my opinion. £40-60 to get it vacuumed and refilled with the correct amount.

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Sounds good and all, but a) what's up with the weird sound and b) shouldn't the system have at least a slight change in the temperature of the car, even if I'm off with how much refrigerant should be in it?

Does it change at all when you’re driving I.e up hill acceleration or downhill coasting (not out of gear tho, just off the accelerator)?

My Leon’s a/c was making a noticeable hiss and it wasn’t blowing cold, got an a/c specialist round to sort, it was low on refrigerant but he also put some dye in the system to help him detect leaks if the car started to blow warm again.

Sash said:

Does it change at all when you’re driving I.e up hill acceleration or downhill coasting (not out of gear tho, just off the accelerator)?

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No, the noise and temperature are both constant

What about when you change the dial to hot? Can you change the temperature that way?

May be I'm missing something, but you're going to spend a s**t load of time, and probably money, when you could just pay Dave the AirCon man to do it.

Agree, I think theres a flap inside the heater box which directs air between either the ac evaporator or the heater core (I could be very wrong about that, i've never had one apart!) so it might be that the flap isn't working properly because a cable has popped off?

On the whole though, take it to someone

Scralar said:

Before I read up and realised you're not supposed to do this, I drained all the refrigerant, and topped it up to the same psi using the new kit. This has failed to make the air any colder.
.

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While I fully agree that the best route is to get the system refilled properly where as said above the machine weighs the refrigerant rather than just going by pressure as the refill kits do - I have still used the top up kits to get an AC working better in the past. One thing you should know is that you should never release refrigerant. I'm not an environmentalist by any stretch but even I wouldn't just dump refrigerant - its a pretty stupid thing to do tbh.

Touring_Rob said:

What about when you change the dial to hot? Can you change the temperature that way?

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Yes, changing it to hot does blast heat, having AC on/off has no effect.

Oggy997 said:

May be I'm missing something, but you're going to spend a s**t load of time, and probably money, when you could just pay Dave the AirCon man to do it.

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Yeah, from reading the replies I'll probably just go get it fixed by a mechanic

Touring_Rob said:

Agree, I think theres a flap inside the heater box which directs air between either the ac evaporator or the heater core (I could be very wrong about that, i've never had one apart!) so it might be that the flap isn't working properly because a cable has popped off?

On the whole though, take it to someone


While I fully agree that the best route is to get the system refilled properly where as said above the machine weighs the refrigerant rather than just going by pressure as the refill kits do - I have still used the top up kits to get an AC working better in the past. One thing you should know is that you should never release refrigerant. I'm not an environmentalist by any stretch but even I wouldn't just dump refrigerant - its a pretty stupid thing to do tbh.

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Yeah, it's supposed to be super hazardous to yourself and the environment, won't be doing that again.

What part of the country are you in? Might be that someone can point you to a good company.

Needs to go to a proper AC place really.

Kwik Fit don't even do it right most of the time.

The hissing noise is just the system low on refrigerant (or at least it has been on cars i've had).

As a ballpark, Clios tend to take around 400-500grams of refrigerant (from memory) and you certainly aren't getting that from a top up bottle.

Touring_Rob said:

What part of the country are you in? Might be that someone can point you to a good company.

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I'm in Essex, between Chelmsford and colchester

Here is a video clip of the hissing in action

UPDATE: After I took this video, I filled up the air con with more refrigerant (closer to 80 psi using the gauge of the kit) and the noise has significantly reduced, and it's actually blowing cold air now. According to everything I've read, I've massively overfilled this, but the labelling on the r134a can says it has 450g of refrigerant. So almost emptying it (since I had previously purged the system) seems to have given it close to the required level of refrigerant recommended by James Bryan

The video:

Yeah that's the sort of hissing I was on about.

Sounds a bit like air going into a balloon as you're blowing it up.

JamesBryan said:

Yeah that's the sort of hissing I was on about.

Sounds a bit like air going into a balloon as you're blowing it up.

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Thanks for your help 🙏

requires a regas, thats all your hissing is, as above take it to a specialist who will leak test it, drain it and regas it with fresh gas and oil. At that age its probably worth sticking a condenser on it for all they cost