Hello Scotty,
My 1997 Cadillac Seville SLS has A/C problems. When I bought the car, I looked under the hood and noticed there was a brand new A/C unit so I automatically thought there weren’t going to be problems with it. But when I traveled home a message popped up on my instrument cluster saying “refrigerant very low, A/C Compressor off” I tried to see if there was any cold air blowing through and there was no cold air. So I thought there was a leak somewhere. To try and avoid the cost and time of putting a whole A/C inside, I decided to recharge it. After following the proper steps of recharging it, it didn’t help any. The same message would pop up. I’m very upset because this has only 78,000 original miles on it. What do you think the problem might be and how much would it cost to make the proper repairs?
And a different off topic question, but with the same car, I am also trying to put in hands free calling and music streaming without changing my factory radio, due to it being a Bose system. So I recently purchased an iSimple Tranzit BLU HF. I plan to hard wire it so that way when I turn the car on, the device can turn on with it. I am gonna wire it to the factory radio wire harness on the 12v accessory wire. In order to avoid electrical problems with my car, what is the general wire gauge that GM uses for the wire harness on their radios?
Thank you,
wyattvernes
Welcome to the forum! Please open a new topic for 2nd question. Thanks.
You need to take this to an automotive ac specialty shop for proper diagnosis and repair. Trying to do it yourself with cans of refrigerant from the auto parts store can do more harm than good.
If it has a leak that needs to be found and fixed. What steps did you take to recharge it?
How do you know you followed the proper steps to recharge the system? You should have checked manifold pressures, pulled a vacuum if there was 0 PSI, then let it sit for an hour or so. Just these first steps would've given you an excellent idea of the health of your system. If it has leaks, it wouldn't hold vacuum, which means it won't hold refrigerant.
Air conditioners are much more complex than hooking up a refill can from the auto parts store with a low side pressure gauge and "filling it up", I wouldn't mess with it if you don't know what you're doing. You're dealing with high pressure gas and liquid. A rupturing system can send debris everywhere and cause serious injuries. Leave it to a pro, it's not worth the risk if you don't know what you're doing.
I suspect the "proper steps" that were followed amounted to "fill to the green" along with the expectation that sealer in the can would "fix" the leak. However, I hate to judge before all the facts are in so I left it an open question. Who knows, maybe we'll be pleasantly surprised this time.
I hope so too, especially given that the compressor sounds like it's new. My step dad would just dump cans of refrigerant in his '99 Cavalier years and years ago instead of fixing the leaks. The compressor ended up going out and he had to get an A/C delete to stop the grinding noises. I learned from that one at 15, haha.