SUCCESS!!!....The Saga of Bad Engineering, a Busted RAV4 Air Conditioning System, & a Desperate Man.
So there I was….headed off to church on a blazing South GA morning. We pile in our 2011 Toyota RAV4 and fire it up. Hot air…followed by more hot air. Uh Oh!! After some initial trouble-shooting (fuses, relays, etc.), I am at a loss. In a last ditch effort, I disconnect the battery and leave it for a while. When I re-connect and fire it up, air comes on ICE cold again. Weird. AC works normally for a few days and then starts blowing hot again. Then over the next couple of weeks it randomly works or doesn't work every time you start up. As luck would have it, of course, we were right in the middle of our move to Tampa. Bad timing. Somehow, the AC held on through the trip down, only to finally give up for good. With a daily 1 hour (each way) commute looming over me in the middle of Florida summer, and not knowing any good mechanics in town yet, I started to get desperate. Besides, I KNEW what they would all say……got to replace compressor and everything. So, off I go to the internet in hopes of some clue about what might be going on. Deep in the bowels of the net, I scrape together just enough info to suggest that my problem COULD be an "AC Flow Sensor." Problem is, Toyota positioned the sensor to be mounted externally on the compressor in such a place that you cannot get to it without removing the bumper, radiator, radiator support, etc. and draining everything. Additionally, they don't sell the sensor, but require that you buy an entire new compressor to get the sensor as part of it. So what to do? Well, after more digging, I find that there is indeed an aftermarket sensor sold by itself for about $15 that would be compatible with my model. I figure….worth a shot. Next issue was the access problem. From the top, I could see the sensor, but not get my hand in to do anything, much less unclamp a rusty "c-clamp" to release the old sensor from the compressor. From the bottom, at great pain to my arm, I could get my hand up and around onto the electrical connector and push the release button, but could not get the plug off of the sensor. Finally, I was able to feed a pair of channel-lock pliers up between the radiator and the frame just enough to get it on the plug (such a tight squeeze that I actually had to remove the rubber grips to make the pliers fit). Then my wife reached from the top with her little tiny hands and pressed the button while I pulled. Success!! The plug was off. There was not chance on earth of getting the old sensor out, so I had to figure out the next step. Ended up plugging in the new sensor and then zip-tying it to the refrigerant line that was heading to right where the old sensor was…..with the hope it could "sense" whatever it needed from there. Then the big test. I fire up the car…….fans come on and COLD AIR immediately!! Been driving it back and forth to work all week, and everything is working great. Could have easily run me $2500+ to replace that compressor etc. at a shop…..but it seems a $15 aftermarket part and some zip ties did the trick.
Thanks to those folks out there on the net, like the guy below, that shared their similar experiences. It really helped!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIQycSprH9U-
Love it when a plan comes together…
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Persistence paid off for you. Good job. Those designs are intentional you know.
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Nice work sir, and take good care of those little hands.😉
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Yep tiny hands do come in handy. 😆 Mine have helped family shade tree mechanics in multiple instances.
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My granddaughter has small hands and she's a trained jeweler. I worked for two hours trying to get a screw started on a turn signal switch. She had it in 10 minutes.
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Glad you met with success without having to pay the "machine" 2500 hundred smackers…. Feels good don't it? Porkin' the "boss" outta $2485.00.
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Good for you
Being a smaller fellow and hands .sure helps me many times working on cars and the newer the car the less room or no roomonmany cases
I remember sitting under the hood of many of my old rids next to the enging while working on it And have plenty rom will have especialy Gm cars and trucks
will add the ford's with the design of spring and shock towers right up against the engines especialy with a big block in then
Some what unrelated, but a tip from many years ago always find a girl with small hands when dating LOL
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