Old age Air-con lifespan

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Thu 23 Jun 2005 20:22
Old age Air-con lifespan - Miller
I am fairly certain the air-con in my seven year old Mondeo has never been repaired/regassed at all since new, yet it still seems to working fairly effectively if not 100%.

I rarely use it winter except to speed up screen de-misting, so it is not as if I have it running regularly outside of the June-August decent weather period....anyone have an older car than mine with air-con that has not needed any work?

(Of course I realise it will not work tomorrow having said the above!)
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Thu 23 Jun 2005 22:11
Old age Air-con lifespan - Tomo
My 1985 Celica Supra which I parted with four years ago still had working air conditioning. The present 1995 Supra has very good aircon, and I imagine it must have had several months of non use while the car made its way from the owner in Japan to me.


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Fri 24 Jun 2005 00:49
Old age Air-con lifespan - Blue {P}
1996 BMW that we've owned from new and never had gassed. Took it in the other day as the compressor wasn't working after engine replacement, (the garage said it needed gassing) The guy at the air con place connected his gauge and the system is still showing full pressure. In fact, it's so high he said that if he opened the valve to his bottle of gas, the gas would drain out of the air con system and into his bottle! :-)

After the garage looked at it again they saw they had in fact not connected a wire to the compressor properly and it's now coping fairly well with the 30 degree heat.

Blue
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Fri 24 Jun 2005 08:35
Old age Air-con lifespan - Roger Jones
For the sake of a £75+ servicing bill every three years, it's not worth neglecting the A/C system. Also, the best advice I've had is basically "use it or lose it". See HJ's advice elsewhere on the site, plus more than a few other threads, including this recent one:

tinyurl.com/arwuh

And servicing is of course a specialist job, normally contracted out by garages.
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Fri 24 Jun 2005 11:59
Old age Air-con lifespan - Orson {P}
Tempting fate, but the aircon on the Jag is still working after 17 years. Unfortunately, it's the old gas (R12?) so once it stops working, that's it (or get new pumps, seals etc at £400).

O
--
Jaguar XJS V12 - comes with free personalised oil tanker.
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Fri 24 Jun 2005 14:08
Old age Air-con lifespan - Ivor E Tower
My parents traded in a 10-year old Volvo 850 estate last year; the aircon was retro-fitted to it when they bought it at 1 year old and they never had any work done to the A/C system. It still appeared to be working fine when the car was traded in.
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