The ac on my 2006 pontiac vibe started blowing hot yesterday. I went to go recharge the system and upon hooking up my guage to the low pressure side, the pressure was beyond 110 psi and my compressor was not running. How does this happen? whats the best way to fix it?
I should also mention, when putting my guage on, a bunch of green liquid sprayed out the service port. not sure what it was?
I mean this with absolutely no disrespect but if your not confident with a/c systems and not sure what the green fluid (refrigerant with dye) is you should avoid working on it because the system can be under high pressure and is also a good fine for releasing into the atmosphere. To that end it sounds like either your compressor is bad causing no cycle or circulation or a charge issue wether over or under filled
You're seeing static pressure, on a hot day it could well be 110 psi though it may be overcharged if you've been adding refrigerant. With the compressor not running you'll see the same pressure on both low and high sides of the system. (You are using a full gauge set and not the worthless low-pressure gauge that comes on some refrigerant cans, right?) The green stuff is dye for leak detection.
This is the kind of thing that if you're not comfortable working with you should have an AC technician checking it out. At a minimum be sure to wear eye protection when working with refrigerant, you do not want that stuff spraying into your eyes.
I wouldn't play around with the air conditioner if you don't know what you're doing, and I mean that as friendly as possible. A properly running low side air conditioner gauge should read 30-40 PSI, "Low" is a relative term here, the high side shouldn't go over 250-275 PSI. If you were to blow out the "Low" side shrader valve when it's running properly, it'd be like blowing up a tire in your face. Right now, there's 4x more pressure than that in there!
The compressor is equipped with a failsafe pressure switch. If the pressure in the system gets too high (too much refrigerant, an obstruction, etc) the sensor will not allow the compressor to engage. If the system were empty of refrigerant, then the compressor should have kicked on for a second when you were adding refrigerant before shutting off again, until a proper charge was in. If that didn't happen at all, the sensor in the compressor could be bad, or there may not actually have been anything wrong with the system itself, and the problem is elsewhere. Check your relays and fuses. If one blew, the compressor isn't being told to turn on. The refrigerant you added probably put air and moisture in with it, which will eventually damage the system if left in there.
