Warm air at idle, cool air while driving

[BrettS]

I recently bought a 2006 freestyle and I've noticed that while it's idling the air put out with the AC running is cooler than the ambient air, but just barely. Once I start driving, however, it cools off quite nicely and I don't have a problem. I'm sitting in the car waiting for my wife to finish work and I just discovered that if I give it a little gas to bring it up to about 1800RPM the air cools off very nicely, so I'm suspecting that it might be an issue with the compressor, but I wanted to run it by you guys and see what you thought.

I do have a set of gauges and I'll hook them up to get some readings as soon as I can, but I'm pretty busy this evening so it may not be for another day or two.

Any ideas before I get the numbers for you?

Thanks much,
Brett

 

[TheJackal]

Could just need a little refrigerant, or could be the compressor. But definitely get the pressures.

 

[BrettS]

Well, I had a little more time than I thought this evening and I went out and took my pressures. (And man is the low side port in a really really horrible place on the freestyle).

Could just need a little refrigerant, or could be the compressor.

Unfortunately, I suspect my answer is actually both of the above.

At idle, after the AC was on for a couple of minutes and everything stablized I got a steady 35psi on the low side and 175psi on the high side.

At about 2000RPM it would get down to about 19psi on the low side and up to about 210psi on the high side. At 2000RPM, however, the compressor would cycle off and on again every 25 or 30 seconds, I'm sure due to the low pressure sensor seeing it go below 19psi on the low side.

So what say you? Low charge, bad compressor, or both?

Thanks again,
Brett

 

[BrettS]

Just wanted to bump this up and see if anyone had any thoughts before I went ahead and replaced the compressor.

Thanks,
Brett