We’re in the middle of summer, it’s sweltering hot in Spain (and much of Europe) and we use the car more than usual because we’re heading off on vacation with it. With this scenario, many drivers are realizing that the car’s air conditioning isn’t working properly because it doesn’t cool as much as it should.
That means something is going on. The mechanic Juanjo Jiménez has spoken about it recently in one of the videos he uploads to his TikTok account. His recommendation to avoid scares with the air conditioning is to have it serviced.
Maintenance isn’t about recharging the air, but about inspecting the circuit
A recurring debate these days is whether to recharge the car’s air conditioner or not. The mechanic Juanjo Jiménez has posted a video on his social networks to settle this question.
Juanjo notes that, in theory, you should not have to recharge the air conditioning of any car because it is a closed circuit and should last until the end of its days with the same gas; however, Juanjo explains that there are leaks and that is when you need to recharge the air conditioning, but not before repairing it.
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Those leaks can appear for many reasons, from a faulty component where part of the gas escapes to a cracked hose in the gas circuit, passing through a dried-out gasket and small pores that let gas escape gradually. What you have to do is locate that leak and repair it.
“Every air conditioning system on any car should leave the factory with a gas, and theoretically, until the end of its days it should keep that same gas. In the vast majority of cases, little by little that gas escapes through some pore or tiny leak. And what happens? It has to be recharged, but, well, be honest, you should also repair that leak,” comments Juanjo.
To avoid these problems, Juanjo indicates that what can be done is regular maintenance of the air conditioning: “Can you service your car’s air conditioning? Of course you can; anyone who says you can’t is lying.”
The mechanic explains what that maintenance consists of: “What you can do is remove the gas from the circuit, create a vacuum, because that vacuum will cause, if we have a basic understanding of physics, the humidity inside to evaporate, which doesn’t benefit anything in the car’s air conditioning cooling circuit.”
But that’s not all: “What you can also do is drain the oil from your car’s air conditioning compressor. Yes, it can be done. We then put fresh oil back in, apply a recharge after performing the vacuum I mentioned earlier, and off it goes,” emphasizes Juanjo.
Be aware, this maintenance is advisable when the air isn’t cooling as much as it should. Obviously, if the car’s air cools perfectly, there is no need to recharge it, so anyone who recommends periodic recharging is wrong (or trying to trick people into paying).
In any case, don’t forget other maintenance tasks as well, such as replacing the cabin air filter, which Juanjo also discusses. This filter ends up accumulating dust and dirt over time and ends up doing a poor job because it becomes clogged; it can even produce bad odors when you switch on the air conditioning.
Images | SEAT and Vauxhall
