AC Clutch

[IgotTwo]

My brother in law and I are going to work on his 97 X this weekend.
He has a AC compressor loaded with red dust which I think is clutch wear. The vehicle needs a new accumulator drier (that infamous rust out under the rubber blanket) which we are going to replace.

So my best guess is the compressor clutch took a beating, cycling on and off with low freon and took a toll on the clutch.

If the clutch still engages and the system holds a charge, is it wishful thinking to think it is long for this world with all that red dust?

He has about 90k on it.
Any thoughts or things to consider or check out before considering just replacing the compressor clutch. I've seen posts that say go for the whole compressor?

Thanks

 

[IgotTwo]

Well for anyone who runs into the same situation, I'll follow up and respond to my own post. It won't be the first time I've been caught talking to myself. And the moderator can always trash the post haha

Yeah, when I saw all that red dust on (there was alot) and around the the AC compressor I thought we didn't have a pray to get that thing to kick in. So the first thing we did was jumped the accumualtor connector and surprisingly it kicked on. How long it will last is another story. But we went for it.

We swapped out the accumulator\drier, charged the system followed all the rules and gave it a good test "burn in." Seeed to hold the charge

We did gunk the engine compartment before we started and made every effort to keep every thing clean but somehow we lost the first can of freon to the schcarder valve on the drier grrrrrrrrr. We twisted the charging connector and got it to set.