Car Air Conditioning (AC) Not Blowing Cold, What’s the Problem?

Hi. I’m Steve and I’m not a professional mechanic and this is not intended to be a how to video. It’s just my personal journey going from a completely stock 2002 Tahoe to a heavily modified 2002 Tahoe and all the little fixes that I need to make along the way.

I like to make these little videos because when I take stuff apart they help me to remember how to put stuff back together. So, if somebody’s watching this can learn from my mistakes and not make the same mistakes themselves I feel like it’s worthwhile. So here we go.

Hello and welcome to the Steve’s Tahoe keeps breaking so he can keep making videos for your show. Today our issue is no AC. All right. So, the issue is that my compressor clutch will not engage. She done be broken. This is the original compressor clutch on the car. See if I can get a hand down there and point out there for you, it’s that right here. So, it won’t engage and I’m going to get the wheel, the fender wheel off over on the passenger side here so I can get some good, easy access to the AC compressor in a second and we’re going to run some tests but straight off the get go is this guy is broken.

All right. So, it’s important to note before I do this repair that I took it by the shop and I had them evacuate all the freon, all the nasty stuff out of here because this is a closed system and the freon that’s in it should not be let out. So, I swung by, I had them take care of that real fast and now I can open up the system without all that bad stuff in there.

So, I’m getting up on jack stance here and take the passenger side wheel and fender wheel up, give me better access to the AC compressor and see if we can’t get in there and further diagnose the situation.

Okay. Passenger side wheel well and with that big plastic thing removed you can see the easy access we get, an easier access we get to our good friend the AC compressor. So, there it is right there. So, at least I can get to the wiring fairly easy and conduct a couple of tests. So, that’s kind of what is on my agenda next. But there it is right there. Pull the wheel off and pull that big plastic fender wheel thing out and at least that’s what I figured out how to get to it.

Okay. So, hiding behind the frame was this connection right here which I’ve undone. That’s it right there. And there’s a green and a black and what I’m gonna do is I’m going to send power to this thing and see if I can’t get it to jump. So, we’ll see how that goes.

All right. So, I’ve got the replacement AC compressor up here and I’ve got one of these nifty power probe things which is actually wired through the 12-volt battery and essentially what I’ve got is the grand cable on and I can put the probe on the positive end and I can actually apply 12 volts worth of power to the compressor and see if the clutch engages. So, we’re going to listen for a click and we’re gonna see if this thing engages here. And here we go. So, as you can see this is working exactly as we need it to and when I perform this exact same test on the one in the truck kaputisky, nothing, no clickety click. So, obviously I’ve got an issue with the clutch and I’m going to go ahead and fix it.

So, right now you can see the clutch, this is really, really hard to turn right here. Well okay, so it free wheels up until the point where the air conditioner goes on like that and now the whole thing turns and then it didn’t disengages, it should have disengaged. I will have to click it again. There it goes and now free wheels again. And that is how the driven AC compressor works.

All right. So, in the car now I got freezing cold air coming in here, everything’s working beautifully. If you wanted more detail on the how I got the AC compressor out, how I got it back in I actually have a couple of other videos where I video that in detail. I’ll link to those videos and the description to this video but that’s pretty much it. Don’t forget to like, comment, subscribe and I got some really, really, really, really, really, really cool stuff coming on the way after the lift gets put in. So, stay tuned, lots more videos to come. Thanks.