I have just bought a 98 Mondeo which has air-con. Assuming it has not needed repairs or replacement from new how much longer can I expect it to go before needing re-gassing or replacement?
Ive heard about 5 years is the best you can hope for, obviously I will run it often as recommended in the manual to try and keep it 'healthy'
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I think you ought to check it every 3 years. The aircon in my wife's 2000 Clio seems to have lost some of its effectiveness - this was demonstrated when we hired a brand new Scenic. The aircon on this froze our n*pples off :)
Maybe go see a specialist rather than a Ford garage - I have a deep mistrust of franchises as they don't rely solely on word-of-mouth like the independants, and usually get trainee mechanics to do complex jobs.
I've seen this at all the garages my brother used to work at (he's got 15 years VW experience)
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I would have it re-charged (re-gassed) by a specialist air-con engineer as soon as you are able to. A low charge induces moisture in the system which is the start of all sorts of problems. In any event, after 6 years I would be thinking about replacing the aircompressor and if you were doing that it would be false enconomy not to replace the receiver-drier. Many garages call in an air-con engineer and dont have one (or the equipment) on site. You can do the same and avoid the garage markup. Many will come to you instead of you taking the vehicle to them.
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Is the gas used in air conditioning similar to fridge freezers.
Reason I ask is that before I retired a few years ago I had a contract with a specialist repair company on industrial type units.
I recall him telling me that shortly he would not be able to re-gas equipment on site due to impending legislation which would prohibit this.
Also a friend had a similar situation a few months ago with a repair man and had to scrap his fridge.
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Gas used in cars since 1994 is R134a. Older cars had R12, which has now been banned. Fridges used to use R12, as well as R22, which is due to be phased out soon as well. Some fridges now use R134a, as per cars. As fridges don't generally have service ports, and they can use a variety of gasses, it's usually cheaper to buy a new one, than pay an engineer to fix the leak and recharge.
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