Car Aircon Recharging

Desert Orchid

Desert Orchid

Senior Jockey
Joined
Aug 2, 2005
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How much should I expect to pay for this?

The prices I've researched vary widely, starting at about £35 for the bottle alone.

I'm pretty sure I got my old Mitsubishi Galant done but that was years (15?) ago and cost something like £37 for the guy to come to the house and do it.
 
During my last Ford service they wanted to charge me £55 - refused as when I picked the car up the salesman had told me it DIDNT have aircon so had never used it!!
 
That would be funny if it wasn't so shockingly true of some garages, Bd.

I've been in touch with a chap via Gumtree. He wants £35 plus £10 fuel to get here. That's not unreasonable but if one of the established quick-service outlets can do it for around the same price I'll go to them as that way I'll at least have a bit of comeback if things aren't done right.

The nearest Which? recommended place is in Edinburgh.
 
Desert Orchid said:
That would be funny if it wasn't so shockingly true of some garages, Bd.

I've been in touch with a chap via Gumtree. He wants £35 plus £10 fuel to get here. That's not unreasonable but if one of the established quick-service outlets can do it for around the same price I'll go to them as that way I'll at least have a bit of comeback if things aren't done right.

The nearest Which? recommended place is in Edinburgh.
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Kwik Fit usually do a deal around this time of year for a free aircon recharge with a service (or maybe it was a new set of tyres?).
 
Couldn't get through to KF last night but they've just told me they charge £49 which seems reasonable although it's maybe not as thorough a process as my local garage (Which? recommended) who said it would be about £65. The guy there says they're in the process of installing a new facility and they have to do a training course in H&S as the gas is lethal! He explained what needs to be done and it sounds very thorough.

Kwik-Fit say they just attach the machine to it and the machine does it all, whatever that means...
 
We don't really as far as houses are concerned (although my house gets very warm in summer due to the very high insulation spec).

When you're used to it in the car you don't half miss it.

My climate control is set to 21C all year round but I might lower it to 19C on a very warm day. If it gets up to 17C+ outside it only takes the sun to come out and the car is like a sauna. Air-con is also useful for its pollen filtering, very helpful to an old broken down asthmatic like me.
 
I took the car along to Kwik-Fit this morning. They explained that they would check the system for leaks and if there were any they wouldn't do the re-charge and wouldn't charge me for their time. Fair enough. There was something else they said they would check and again if any issues they wouldn't do anything and wouldn't charge me.

About an hour later they phoned to say they couldn't find the ports for the re-charge, that they might be behind the headlights and they weren't prepared to remove the headlights so they wouldn't do it.

I've literally spent the afternoon checking Jaguar forums for mention of this problem (don't see any) and phoning around for prices, most of which are around the £65+vat mark. One place in the East End wants £50.

Just out of curiosity I phoned my local Jaguar franchise. £59.99 inc vat. I must say I was expecting at least three times that. I mentioned what K-F said and asked about complications. "We'll honour the price regardless," was the reply. That sounds very fair indeed so I'm taking the old beast along on Wednesday.
 
Jag dealerships are great in my experience. I have a MK3 Mondeo - which is about 90% mechanically identical to the same age Jags. The parts in Jaguar are about half the price of Ford parts - and they are made in the same factory with the same part number. The guys on the service desk in Belfast are really helpful - I would say at least half their business comes from Ford drivers who aren't willing to pay for Ford services and parts.
 
Hopefully this business has come to a conclusion (but I have reservations).

The Jag place couldn't fix the air-con on Wednesday. They said they couldn't get the last 20% of the gas to charge and that the machine was saying my car's air-con system was contaminated. The gave me the car back without charging anything and said they'd see if there was a problem with their machine.

Their 'health check' said the car had a broken spring coil (£1150+), required wheel bearings (£1140+), new discs (they were new two years/10k miles ago) (£290 front, ££340+ rear). All in all £3500+ of work (for a car they probably wouldn't offer me £2000 for in a trade-in).

They also advised of a chip in the windscreen. Couldn't they have noticed it was already sealed by Autoglass?

"Dents and scratches around car" - geez, did they use a magnifying glass to find them? The car is a 55-plate and has over 187,000 miles on the clock. I know every scratch and dent on the car and they are hardly visible. Anyone glancing at the car would think it is in fantastic condition for its age never mind its mileage.

Anyway, I stopped off at the garage across the road and showed them the health check report. They said they'd been genning up about air-con (since they're getting the machinery fitted soon) and have been told that it is a cash cow. Apparently saying the system is contaminated is the open door to big money. They can fix the coil spring for about £75 all-in, by the way.

Some good news, though.

Jaguar phoned me back. There was a problem with their machine and they could do my car on Friday so I took it down yesterday. They recharged it, gave me £20 off for having to come back, and washed the car. That seems fair enough.

My reservation is that it was so chilly up here yesterday it's hard to tell if the air-con is working as it wouldn't kick in, even taking the temp down to minimum (<17C) as it was 13C outside and dropping.
 
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"They explained that they would check the system for leaks and if there were any they wouldn't do the re-charge and wouldn't charge me for their time."

If there wasn't a leak, you wouldn't need a re-charge in the first place. There should be some sort of ruling on this, that they can't just keep giving people a zap of refrigerant every couple of years as it's obviously slowly leaking out into the environment.

I've still got a 20yo Jeep, in the tropics, AC going strong. I read newer cars have to keep getting refrigerant topped up every few years, so it's obviously some sort of quality with the AC units that are being used today. Maybe thats because the gas isn't as harmful as in days gone by, so standards have been allowed to slip.

Anyway, no leak, no need for gas.
 
The saga continues...

The aircon definitely wasn't working on Friday (when it was sunny and approaching warm) so I phoned the Jag place. They asked me to come down to check it over. They said it was working but only intermittently (true, it felt as if it was on ten minutes into the journey down the road) and had identified a fault with the compressor, which is linked to the heater, which is in the dash and to sort the problem would require the removal of the dash. There was no way I was letting them to that at their prices.

The garage across the road said the compressor isn't behind the dash but at the front of the engine. He checked it yesterday but reported his computer was identifying an electrical fault which would involve taking off the dash but he referred me to an auto-electrician who is a wizz at bypassing these problems, so he's coming out next week to see if he can fix it. The guy has worked on the car before. He is sh1t hot at stuff.

I just need the car to be able to get through its next MOT then I can decide whether to sell it or keep it another year. I'm tempted to keep it. There's not much left that requires renewing! I could spend a few thou changing up to a younger car only for these things to go wrong with the younger model!
 
They do advise that you use your air con at least an hour a week whether you need it or not, the seals dry out if you don't and the refrigerant leaks out. Don't forget that air cons work on hot and cold, not just cold.
 
Flagship uberalles said:
Jag dealerships are great in my experience. I have a MK3 Mondeo - which is about 90% mechanically identical to the same age Jags. The parts in Jaguar are about half the price of Ford parts - and they are made in the same factory with the same part number. The guys on the service desk in Belfast are really helpful - I would say at least half their business comes from Ford drivers who aren't willing to pay for Ford services and parts.
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Very strange, I have found exactly the opposite, Mondeo spares much cheaper then Jaguar.
 
walsworth said:
They do advise that you use your air con at least an hour a week whether you need it or not, the seals dry out if you don't and the refrigerant leaks out. Don't forget that air cons work on hot and cold, not just cold.
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I wasn't aware of that walsworth but I have my climate control on automatic all the time so the aircon is always on (but maybe not always kicking in, I suppose, in winter for example. I have it set at 20C pretty much all year round, maybe taking up to 21 or 22 in winter and on a very hot day maybe down to 18 in summer (but on a long drive you notice the lower temperature).
 
I've just had my trusty auto-electrician out to check the car.

The garage across the road said his computer was telling him it was an electrical problem and the my sparks was the best guy for the job. However, the sparks's computer told him it there were no electrical faults coming up. He did some further tests and concluded it was a mechanical issue with the air-con pump. He did a bit of phoning around for me and eventually advised that the cost of repairing/replacing the air-con pump would be prohibitive as it is a 6.5hr job before you even consider the cost of the replacement unit. He said his own car (a very old Volvo with 370,000 miles on it) has a few things that don't work and he won't fix them because he can live without them.

He passed on a very strong recommendation for an engine cleaning service called Terraclean. He said it costs about £140 all-in but he said the difference it made to his won car was unbelievable. He said he would now recommend any car owner should get this done to their engine if they have about 100,000 miles on it. He said it is as close to a complete strip-and-clean-and-rebuild as you could ever get.

Given that I am the type to buy a 3yo car at auction with 100,000 miles on it, it's a possibility for when I come to change.
 
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