tuna10985

iTrader: (2)

Let me apologize right off the bat, because this is for a Nissan. It's my sister's car ('97 nissan sentra), and I'm not signing up for a nissan forum just for one question so don't harrass me (A/C systems are fundamentally all the same anyways, right?). So, my sister was complaining (a couple of days after the car had been flooded a couple of inches higher than the bottom of the doors) that her A/C would blow cold for a few minutes after she started it up, then it would blow hot air. I checked low side pressure with it running & A/C on and got 35 psi steady. I sat in the car for about 5 minutes waiting for the phantom hot air to manifest itself, which never happened. I got bored and started messing around in the garage, frequently coming back to check for heat menace & pressure. After about 10 min of this (15 min total) I heard a loud noise & turned around to see a cloud of aerosolized freon billowing out of the car accompanied by an obnoxious hissing sound. I shut the car off (it was still blowing cold air) and waited for the hissing to die down to a level that made me less uncomfortable about crawling under the car and putting my face in danger. I discovered that the leak was out of the compressor itself. On the front of the compressor there is a small fitting of some sort with a hole in the center of it that appears to be some sort of relief valve/weephole apparattus. The fitting sort of reminded me of what a really tiny power steering tube (1/32", maybe) fitting would look like if you were to break the tube off at the fitting. I have searched the internet for about 2 hours and have not seen anything close to what I witnessed. Thanks for any help you are able to provide me in troubleshooting this communist machinery.

firetpi

iTrader: (1)

Just thinking of what u said real quick. Something must be clogging( or causing excess pressure) on the high pressure side, that is a relief port on the compressor, as i recall once they blow they are done and u need a new one. I dont recall much more on the subject. i hope i was some sort of help

tuna10985

iTrader: (2)

Yeah you just confirmed it for me. I finally found something on the topic earlier. It said that fitting thing is a high pressure relief valve, sort of like a fuse, to blow before any of you A/C system components blow. It also said that the valve can be replaced and the compressor may be just fine. Thats all fine and good, but I am thinking that if the pressure in the system got high enough to blow the valve, then there must be something wrong elsewhere in the system and it likely needs to be flushed at a minimum. I'm not going to mess with all that, I'll just have her take it to an A/C shop where they are equipped to do that stuff. Thanks for the tip!