2007 XLT Front AC intermit. Hot / Rear Ice cold (NOT BLEND DOOR)

[bigjoncoop]

2007 Explorer XLT V6 4.0

Today I noticed a faint refrigerant smell coming from the front AC vents and realize that it was blowing warm air. So I figured I had a leak in the system. Hopefully not the evaporator...

But then I realized that the rear AC was still blowing ice cold! But how could that be?

I understand that the rear AC has a separate evaporator but don't the front and rear evaporators share the same compressor? So if there is a leak in the front system wouldn't that affect the rear as well?

I made sure the blend door was fully open in the cold position. And as I mentioned I smell a faint refrigerant smell...

As I'm writing this I just realized that if I turn the front blower down to one for a while with the rear AC running, after about 10 minutes if I turn the front blower onto High it blows ice cold for about 5 seconds and then goes warm again...

ANY IDEAS?

 

[Bazz270]

Grab a leak detector sensor for the beginning.

Front a/c wont work for a thousands of reasons like a damaged vacuum lines,vacuum line valve,bad climate console controls etc

They share the same compressor and the same a/c lines and components.
The rear controls are separated electronic only while the front are both vacuum-electronic controls.

If your rear a/c is still operative there is enough refrigerant remained in the whole system

 

[Grantb101272]

I had a similar problem on my Explorer. Replaced the vacuum lines with the plenum chamber under the glove box and into the engine bay, problem solved. I found one of the lines in the engine bay had broken just where it comes through into engine bay from glove box.