Any guides to fitting air con compressor?

[Drapoon]

My air conditioning (zexel compressor!) packed up 9 days out of warranty.... so fearing the worst & hoping for the best I had the system re-gassed (was very low as it happens) but still nothing & mechanic suspects compressor as I expected thanks to all the advice given on this forum ;-)

I Spoke to the local vw dealer & they want £80 to investigate & as it's out of warranty said I would have to pay full whack for any replacement parts & labour

So armed with this I rang vw customer care, they told me I had to have the fault identified by a vw garage (which is fair enough) as my warranty has expired they might contribute towards labour but not a guarantee. I've seen people quote 1k for the parts & labour to fix this problem - £600 for compressor & £400 labour.

I'm thinking of buying a new compressor (sanden), fitting it myself then have the system cleaned & re-gassed gratis ( my dad works at a ford garage)


This way I simply shell out 200 euros for a compressor on german ebay & avoid the £80 investigation bill plus £200 odd at best labour charges....

So does anyone know of a guide to fitting a new compressor & whether I need any other parts?


many thanks

Martin

[bacillus]

A word of warning, if the compressor has failed it may have deposited metallic shards within the ac system. Simply replacing the compressor if the system is contaminated with shards will lead to it's premature failure.

[danishmkvgti]

A word of warning, if the compressor has failed it may have deposited metallic shards within the ac system. Simply replacing the compressor if the system is contaminated with shards will lead to it's premature failure.

 My whole ac system packed up 10 month after a Shi*** garage didn't clean the system for shards from the Zexel pump, make sure the system is totally clean before fitting the new one. 

[Drapoon]

Thanks for the advice chaps ;-)

Can the compressor be fitted & then the system flushed using the re-gassing machine?

My dad ran a system flush before re-gassing but I think that just removed the moisture?

Strangley my system should hold 525g(?) of gas as sticker on front panel states but would only hold 475, which would have been enough for the sytem to run on but it wouldn't, tried to kick in for a split second then stopped.

Should I remove the condensor & clean it out with a compressed air prior to fitting compressor?

[bacillus]

Should I remove the condensor & clean it out with a compressed air prior to fitting compressor?

That's a good idea but be advised if shards are present it would be best to replace it.