My mother has a 2010 Honda Civic 4 door EX with 145,000 Miles, 1.8L engine. When you start it up sometimes it will run smooth and quiet for a minute or two, but then sound like the engine is grinding really bad like there's no oil in it. I loosened the serpentine belt and popped it off the alternator to check the pulleys. They all felt fine except the A/C compressor, that one was hard to turn and felt very rough. The plate on the outside moved fine, it was just the pulley. Also, the A/C would never engage or work since I bought it for her. I was wondering if you think that is the problem and if it is, would I be lucky enough to just change the clutch pulley, or would I have to change out the whole unit?
If the clutch pulley is rough and noisy the bearing is shot. On a lot of compressors the clutch assembly is either not available separately or is not much cheaper than the entire compressor. If you intend to repair and use the air conditioning use a new compressor, not rebuilt. If you don't intend repairing the AC on some cars it is possible to fit a shorter belt to bypass the compressor.
