took the plung with my AC
My AC hans't worked for the two years I've had the car, and i finally took the plunge to read up and have a look. (40 degree heat in France last year encouraged me!)
First thing i discovered, was my AC is aftermarket, although fitment included the right HVAC controller with the AC buttons and wiring, so probably quite a bit was spent fitting it. A lot of the time a separate button is installed.
A trip to alpinair and testing showed the system was empty and the condenser is rotten.
After vacuum testing and re-gassing, the compressor and pipework seem good, as does the evaporator, which being aftermarket, is copper so should not rot so easily.
the system now has uv died gas and oil in it and the ac works as expected, but i will take the plunge and get the condenser changed.
I also used Tore B's excellent web pages to check out that all the buttons and servos etc where working properly, which they all were apart from the footwell flap controls, which did not work.
Tore's guide suggested these servos can go, but you might get a temp fix by giving them a tap.
So i removed the cover at the back of the frunk to have a look. To my surprise, I found the servo did work, but the articulation arm attaching it to the flap had come off.
I put it back on, but it fell off again, so have now applied judicious some blu tack to the holder and it seems to be staying in place and all the flaps and AC work. Hooray!
Hopefully this will be made long lasting by replacing the condenser.
Feeling pretty satisfied, at using the resources on here and Tore's site with a bit of specialist help to get to the bottom of it.
J