My dash air doesn't work and the po spent $3500 with little improvement. I want to remove the belt on the compressor as why turn it if it doesn't work. Only item the belt turns. Any reasons I shouldn't do this?
Ours has been removed as well! I did it when the clutch froze up!
Only if the belt is operating other accessories. If the compressor is not turing very little power is used.
Our A/C belt has been MIA for 5 years. No adverse effect that I can see. DWMYH
Leaving the useless belt in place and the A/C clutch pulley turning does not take much power...BUT...in a "Worst Case Scenario" it could possibly cause other problems. Like, if the compressor clutch bearing froze the belt might continue to turn and slip until it got so hot it burst into flame. OR, the compressor clutch bearing freezes and the belt breaks, gets tangles up in the serpentine belt that drives your water pump and alternator, causing them to stop operating.
So for me, removing the belt just makes sense.
Ours started squeaking, loud enough to here while driving so just pulled the belt. Extra alternator is going in it's place when I have time.
Pierce
I would be fairly unhappy to not have our dash air. Driving west into the setting sun the dash air fills in for the roof air at the dash.
Like you all did not already know that.
Sorry.
I run the genny and roof air if it's to hot but very seldom need it in summer camping in Colorado and Utah. I'll remove so it can't freeze up
Wish we knew where he spent the $3500 so we could cross that one off the list.
My experience with so called "Air Conditioning Shops" is that many of them are simply peddling expensive parts. They just keep swapping out parts rather than trying to actually deduce the real cause of the problem.
I could buy a new compressor, expansion valve, condenser fan and drier filter for under $500.00 labor for the expansion valve would be whatever they charge for 2 hours work 30 minutes to change the compressor and depending whether you remove the left rear fender up to 1 hour labor for the drier filter. I'd like to get $3,500 for that work. I think that the shops aren't taking the time to make sure there are no leaks. The Monaco I had needed a hose changed that only my sniffer found. The dye never showed up as it was such a slow leak. Charge a coach up and say it's fixed and a week or two later the refrigerant is gone, repeat at another shop and it never gets fixed.
In June 2019 we departed D-FW metro area headed for Blue Ox factory in Pender NE. About 20 miles out of D-FW the dash air turned warm/hot. I thought we needed freon. Stopped in south OK City for fuel and when I checked the engine I found a broken A/C compressor belt and the tension pulley spinning next to the main drive pulley off the engine. A bolt had broken that held up the tension pulley. I wired up the tension pulley assembly and we hit the loop around OK City looking for a engine shop to fix the problem. Didn't find a suitable repair shop so stopped for the night in Guthrie OK for the night. A Tractor Supply store was close by so was able to find s suitable grade 8 bolt and put the pulley assembly back together. Biggest challenge was tightening the bolt and keeping tension on the new belt. There must be a special tool for this.
That's not reserved just for AC shops. And they swap parts at your expense.
Pierce
Just use a pry bar to hold tension, could be a tire iron very large screwdriver etc. It helps if the lower bolts are real tight also.
Once I have the list of needed other parts updated and replaced, I may go after the dash ac. For now, I'll go without.
Thanks for the help
.
While we're on the subject.
Just finished replacing the compressor, expansion valve, filter / dryer, added 3 puller fans to the back side of the condenser AND all the O-rings. Now after all that I take it to local shop to get charged and he wasn't sure how much oil to add to the compressor. My search on the forum didn't show much.
Does anyone know how much ?
( and Craneman, your right all that was less than 500. ( so far- fingers crossed )
With all that's been spent on it you shouldn't like much having a good system..
See if this info helps:
Dash Air Conditioner Refrigerant and Oil Capacity (http://web.archive.org/web/20200111051919/http://beamalarm.com/Documents/dash_air_conditioner_refrigerant_and_oil_capacity.html)
That is certainly consistent with other articles I read that suggest most vehicles use 4oz of oil.
Thanks Chuck...
Temp amnesia on the Beamalarm thing, even though my DW mentioned trying the BA site. Now I just hope there's that tag on the new compressor.
Just an FYI , don't install the compressor without dumping the "transport / shipping" oil out first or you'll need to remove it and do that. Don't ask how I know.
Also just to mention,, I wasn't thrilled with the format for Beamalarm since MOT got it.
The new compressor I bought came with a tag and the correct oil and the amount needed. I had to add the 4 oz to allow for the long hoses on my coach.
Same here, when I replaced the compressor on the SOB.
Here is the link to Barry's original site
http://web.archive.org/web/20191218121353/http://beamalarm.com/
I know I am late to the party but here goes.
In the food industry our plant was a firm believer in the HACCP program. ( Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point ). This program is designed to pinpoint places in the manufacturing process that if that point fails, there is the possibility of contamination of the product or ( and ) the failure would stop the production line. A good example is the temperature control mechanisms that controlled the temperature of the oil in our 500 gallon oil roaster for nuts. If it failed we could lose a couple of thousand pounds of pistachios ( expensive ) or worse, fire. Now of course we had in place another system for fire suppression ( with it's own set of HACCP points). So the question we had to answer is within the temp control, what parts we could replace quickly to keep the process going. Was it worth it to have that part on hand, could we work around that part, and a host of other questions that had to be answered and an action plan formed for each part. Some Control points are more critical than others so they had to be priority ranked. We had many motors and conveyor bearings replaced before each season whether they had failed or not. During walnut season we had sets of doubles scheduled for delivery every 20 minutes. Any proactive measure we could take to make sure that process went smoothly we did.
On my rig the dash air has failed. PO spent a couple of coach bucks but the return on investment was poor. Therefore I had a decision. I now had 2 HACCP points to fail. The belt itself, or the compressor bearing, clutch assembly, the failure of either had a real potential of "stopping the production line". The decision was easy. The removal of the belt took away 2 control points that actually were no longer a part of the process and 2 points I no longer had to worry about.
I apply this principal a lot on the rig in determining what kind of parts and tools I carry. Wish I could apply it to items in the coach kitchen cabinets and our closets but unfortunately I can't get the management ( DW ) of that department to get on board.
The M11's have a single dedicated belt for the air conditioning compressor and single dedicated belt for the alternator. No worry about stopping the production line on my coach just keep on truckin'
The coach is more comfortable and designed to have dash air, removes condensation in winter use, undriveable in real winter without ac dried warm air on the glass? But I am a fanatic on retaining all the various systems the coach had new
On defrost I assume the a/c compressor comes on?
Removed it. No problem and it's stored in the winter. The dash heat works great and I sure enjoy the hot water when arriving at the campground because of the heater option from the engine coolant
Our ac was seized when we saw it on the lot. We requested it to be fixed before we completed the purchase. We were actually there when the guy came to work on it. He was definitely a "rough around the edges" kind of guy. He replaced just the compressor, not even the drier. System has been fantastic for 6 years since. We did have to replace the condenser fan and I used a generic advance auto fan - which surprisingly moves a ton of air. It's getting a little weak now so I probably have a very slow leak.
In our coach we really need the dash ac plus the generator and roof acs to be comfortable.
Our dash air was blowing fairly warm air. After reading this last week, I decided to get after it. First, put in some dye and ran the system looking for leaks. Didn't find anything. Put the vacuum pump to it and evacuated the system. Left the gauges on and didn't loose any vacuum pressure for over 6 hours.
Just to be safe, before recharging it, put in a can of Red Angel. Then recharged with R134a. By the time I was finished, it took almost 7 pounds of Freon.
The good news, when I did the job last Friday, it was blowing 42 degrees at the dash vents. Ran it today, and still blowing 42 degrees at the dash vents.
Curious to see how long it lasts, but very happy to have cold air at the dash again.
I was fortunate to be able to borrow the gauge set and vacuum pump from a friend. Watched a lot of YouTube videos to learn how to use them.
I had a bit of an interesting time charging mine which has caused me to start looking into superheat and subcooling. Basically my belt has always been lose which led to me tightening it. (short story - required a pry bar and a 2x4 thanks to no tensioning screw).
Since mine has been progressively getting warmer, I checked the refrigerant levels and it was only hitting around 150psi on the high side and 10psi on the low side. So I put half a can into it and it got up to 200psi on the high side and 20psi on the low side. Dash vents felt MUCH colder. Of course since it was 95F outside the low side was supposed to be something like 45-50psi and the high side was supposed to be 240psi. So I started adding more refrigerant, another half a can. Interestingly the high side refused to go over 200psi and even if it did go over 200psi while charging it never stayed there and seemed to keep wanting to go down. The low side did creep up though towards 25psi. I decided to quit while I was ahead but I've never seen a system behave quite like that. It must have something to do with how the expansion valve works or more likely limited knowledge on my part.