aircon on 205s

felixblack1

felixblack1

Member
Fellow Frogger
Joined
May 30, 2002
Messages
145
Location
Brisbane
can someone tell me why the aircon can't hack the aussie heat.
is it the condensor, compressor, combination???

i have a larger condensor off another car and was thinking of having this fitted. could this help?
 
felixblack1 said:
can someone tell me why the aircon can't hack the aussie heat.
is it the condensor, compressor, combination???

i have a larger condensor off another car and was thinking of having this fitted. could this help?
Click to expand...

if you find a solution please let me know....

My theory is that the 205 has too much window area that letting sun & heat in c.f. the size of the aircon.

Cheers
Billy

PS. My rule of thumb is that if the car is hot when you get inside it...don't bother turning the aircon on in the 205...cos it will just make a noise, dull the throttle response and use HEAPS of fuel.
 
Hi Felix,

I think it could have mostly to do with what billy said. The car was designed for colder climates, The condensor seens to be large enought to cope and the compressor seems to be a standard size. Maybe its just another 205 electrical problem??

Nick
 
PS. My rule of thumb is that if the car is hot when you get inside it...don't bother turning the aircon on in the 205...cos it will just make a noise, dull the throttle response and use HEAPS of fuel.
Click to expand...

i think you'll find that in the factory manual somewhere. :D

The condensor seens to be large enought to cope and the compressor seems to be a standard size.
Click to expand...

that's what i've always figured. i know the blower fan doesn't help, you can barely feel it. i have heard of a compressor upgrade which is supposed to help :confused:

it would make me real happy if the aircon worked a treat.
 
I've currently got an a/c that switches on and off constantly ie cool air for 2 mins, warm air for 5 mins, repeat endlessly. Does this mean it needs to be regased, is it an electrical fault, or something else?
 
Felix,

Most refrigeration systems are a balanced system and there is such a thing as 'overcondensing' as any fridge mechanic will tell you.
CXs have a similar problem & we found the solution was to isolate the heater matrix from the air/con evaporator more effectively and also reduce the amount of heat bleeding in from the engine bay.
Even though we effectively fixed the problem on one of our CXs I still have the theorists who tell me that this isn't the cause and will probably want to argue, so I can only tell you what worked for us.
We found that there was a piece of polystyrene between the two that simply falls apart with age. I picked it as an external/excessive load when I discovered with the gauges on the compressor it would operate perfectly until the engine thermostat opened & then the backpressure and head pressure would go through the roof indicating an horrendous heat load.
Once the load was removed by making another coolite baffle and insulating the underbonnet air supply tower, the internal air temperature dropped considerably and the air/con then proceeded to work.
I can't believe that as new any car has air/con that doesn't work effectively as the number of warranty claims would be unbelievable, I can however come to grips with the possibility of something deteriorating through age & this causing the air/con not to work. The matrix isn't an easy thing to access on any car, froggys in particular so I would be inclined to wait until the need arose to get into that area before I began looking for the problem unless you can afford to have the car off the road for a few days.
As regards "hopscotch"s problem; that sounds like low gas, high side blockage or (as a first off check) one of the fans not operating.


Hope that is some help to you both.


Alan S
 
They are as usless as tits on a bull.. pull it out coz it just weighs u down.
 
Alan.. maybe the timing of my post could have been better.... but what the hey...

RIP IT OUT ANYWAY!!!!!
 
weighs you down?

i've pulled out the condensor, it weighs nothing, sure the condensor wieghs a bit... but those pipes are tiny. i reckon it time for a broad sweeping statement like "those people who say AC weighs u down r full of crap" :p

as much as i dislike AC for a number of reasons, i still wouldn't chuck it out. mine was slowly losing gas, but after being told it was going to cost $700 to fix, i preceeded to fix it myself, by replacing the condensor and a few seals, all for around $250 gassed. now it works fine ICE COLD!!!, and thank god, cause living in sydney the humidity on a hot rainy day with a couple of people on your car can make ur windscreen a little foggy! also did a little trip to melbourne and its more fuel effecient on the highway (only, in the city.. get real!!!), quieter and boy did you boys have some stinkers down there! :whistle:

my understanding is that its the compressor that puts the main load on the engine, and hence fuel. so a bigger one may increase this. but newer cars seem to chew less fuel with AC so perhaps fitting a newer coompressor would be the go. or the ultimate would be a electric motor small and powerful enough do drive the compressor, so the engine and hence fuel would not be affected at all. they have now got electric power steering that saves fuel, just have to wait a bit longer.

oh and heaps of 205s have AC trouble!

what was all that teknikal jargon allan was on about? :p :D
 
thankyou Alan!
though i wasn't looking foward to any solutions which required taking apart the dash. i have heard of similar stories of the heater never being fully closed.

so what your saying is their is some polystyrene flap door which regulates the flow through the heater core. this flap crumbles with age and allows some of the air to be heated. you replaced it with coolite with a better seal. what is coolite? and how did you go about insulating the air feed from underbonnet temps?

thanks
Felix
 
a engineer i work said you can gas your system with LPG, which makes things that cold you can feeze water over the vents..

if you have a crash and puncher the sytem it can cause a fire..

id be intrested in seeing how this goes...

cheers
Nathan
 
If you can fit a big condensor to it like one off of a falcon. Also if the ac is thieving power from the engine put a reduction pulley on the compressor and up your idle a bit. A bigger condensor and a faster compressor will make the ac work a fair bit better.

Tom
 
i have a S1 205, and the air con works but the fan doesnt.. at all. i took it to a servo and they said there's a variable resistor behind the thermostat/fan lever and the resistor itself is cheap, but getting to the required area is the hard part.. has anyone else experienced this prob? how do u go about fixing a cheap variable resistor that controls the a/c witout pulling out the dash?

mind u my dash is quite cracked near the instrument cluster.. so if anyone is selling a dash fascia(or howeva u say it) for a 205...
are they easily installed? can a S3 205 dash fit into an S1?


:cheers:

:peugeot: 205GTI 87
 
When I pranged my 205 I crushed the condensor and it was replaced by a new unit the a/c is nice and cool now, still have not tried it out on a stinkin hot day though but it is definetly cooler than before, perhaps getting the condensor re-con might help, but the cost may be a bit high.
 
felixblack1 said:
can someone tell me why the aircon can't hack the aussie heat.
Click to expand...

Felix - don't forget we've been having a heatwave in Brisbane. I'd say most cars on the road would be struggling at the moment.

Why not wait until the weather normalises a bit (should be soon?) and then see if it still struggles. Only then should you start operating (ie, forking out dollars) on it. :2cents:
 
felixblack1 said:
thankyou Alan!
though i wasn't looking foward to any solutions which required taking apart the dash. i have heard of similar stories of the heater never being fully closed.

so what your saying is their is some polystyrene flap door which regulates the flow through the heater core. this flap crumbles with age and allows some of the air to be heated. you replaced it with coolite with a better seal. what is coolite? and how did you go about insulating the air feed from underbonnet temps?

thanks
Felix
Click to expand...

Felix,

Sorry for the delay but I have some problems here at present keeping me well off the board.
The story about Froggy air/con not coping with "Australian conditions" are just a cop out. Let's face it, 30 deg in London is as hot as 30 deg in Darwin and the Europeans usually engineer to a higher ambiant than the yanks so that is a misnomer. Most car air/cons have a capacity on par with an air/con system you'd find in a lounge room in a house to give you a comparison.
"Coolite" is a term I shouldn't use as it's confusing. That's the brand name of the first polystyrene that came on the market and was made into what we now call "Eskys;" another brand name. :mallet:
Inside the heater boxes they usually have a deflector flap or insulated panel between the heater matrix & the air/con evaporator. Once this disintegrates, you are left with the heat off the matrix turning the area into an oven and placing a heat load onto the section (evaporator) whose job it is to cool. When this gets added to it a supply of hot air via the air intake it is impossible for it to work. It's akin to having an air/con working in the bedroom & having a couple of fan heaters also going at the same time; one cancels out the other.
Another point also is the factor of icing up of the coil (evaporator) due to outside air getting into that area. If a fresh air supply is getting in particularly on a wet or humid day, the fins on the evaporator will ice up solid within minutes and you will immediately lose about 90% of your cooling which is why the air flap should be set on recirculate. On some cars, as soon as the A/C is turned on, this flap is automatically closed, however on Cits at least, it has to be manually selected.
The air tower I have seen insulated using lagging as used in house construction (slagwool with a silver paper covering) which looks a bit dodgy, however I intend doing one of my cars using cut pieces of polystyrene.
Here are some pics from Shane's site regarding the heater system & the third one down shows the polystyrene flap where it should go, superimposed in yellow.

http://www.aussiefrogs.com/shane/cx2400/Heatercore/heaterbox/heaterbox.html

Also, I don't know how the fresh air supply is fed into a Pug, but on a CX it's via the tower that sits up against the bonnet when closed. This often leaks & also causes a lot of hot air to get into the car. The pic shown here shows how I made a seal out of underlay between the bonnet & actual air tower & it made a lot of difference.

oilbottle.jpg


You'll see the cream coloured rim on the bonnet around the vent. That's it.

FWIW, we had to spend a heap of time doing mods to one of the boys BX last week as the air/con was far too cold; it would almost freeze you and was steaming outsides of windows up.
Remember, I live about 4 hours further north than you, so that's how effective froggy air/con can be if the environment for it to work is correct.
Also, be sure that there isn't a pile of leaves or other crap stuck between the condensor & radiator and that the fans are workoing correctly. There's nothing mysterious about air/con & how it works; it simply picks up the heat inside the car & transfers it to the outside, hence keep as much unnecessary heat as possible from passing over the internal coil, so it is collecting nothing but the heat load inside the car and make sure it has plenty of air passing over & through the condensor on the outside of the car so it has somewhere to get rid of it.
The load on the engine (same as a BX) should be minimal. My 16Trs used to do 7.2L/100 klms without air/con on & 7.3L/100 klms with it on. That was a bit exceptional, but these systems don't really drain the engine of power too much unless something's amiss.


Alan S :cheers:
 
thanks again Alan. :cheers:

i can see how sealing the intake for the Cit helped. the 205 intake for the fan is inbetween the windscreen and bonnet. however i always use the recircluated air for the ac. driving home before in the rain, it worked fine. i guess the lack of sun and spray of water on the condenssor may have helped.

the compressor is only new and i had all seals in the engine bay replaced. the fans work fine. i have reflective heat shield sleeves over the ac hose which are above the exh manifold. i have a new fan blower, but a problem with most 205s i have seen is the blower will rarely be on fully speed. often can be at quite low speeds, do you think the low airflow could cause the condenssor to ice up. i may attach a seperate switch for 12v, i assume the fan could handle 12v?

FWIW, we had to spend a heap of time doing mods to one of the boys BX last week as the air/con was far too cold; it would almost freeze you and was steaming outsides of windows up.
Click to expand...

that's the sort of potential i like to here! i'd imagine the ac components would be similar to the pugs?
 
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