My car's A/C was R-134 certified by its previous owner. Last year I ran out of refrigerant, but didnt bother recharging it. So, in April I ran down to the local parts store & picked up a cannister & recharged it according to the directions on the cannister.

It cools just fine, but when I run my A/C... the engine temp gauge indicates the engine's temp increases. What would cause my engines temp to increase, by just running the AC?

 

Hi

I have an idea:

Every A/C consists of 2 heat excangers.
One gets hot the other one cold.

The one that gets cold is in your ventilation system,
the other one is in front of your radiatior.
The heat that is carried away from your interior has to be
released to the outside air.
As the outer heat excanger is directly in front of your radiator
your water temps rise.

If it is located at any other position your water temps will not rise.
But thats just like most manufatures try to assemble the heat excanger and radiator in one package, to minimize inlet opening because of bad effects to aerodynamics.


-Patrick

 

Typical, just keep an eye on it.

Also, when running the A/C, you're engine now has to pressurize the system with the A/C compressor, this takes power, and thusly makes the engine work harder/get a little hotter.

There should be an electric fan in place to combat the additional load, but that may be non-functional or not even present. Check for it and install it if necessary, it should be under neath your hood latch, in front of the stack of condensor and radiator cores.

 

Yes, the condenser, which cools off the hot refrigerant, is directly in front of the radiator. This means that the air going through the rad is hotter than normal and doesn't cool as well. As stated, there should be an auxiliary electric fan in front of the condenser to help with this.

 

Ok, this makes sense... as when I'm just highway cruising, its barely noticable. When I became concerned is when I get stuck in rush hour traffic.

Normally, I can just sit in traffic & engine temps are fine. But, turn on the AC & heats right up.

 

***The auxiliary fan is not present on all cars***. I've only seen it on ones with Auto Trans. If you don't have a one wire sensor on *top* of the thermostat housing, you don't have a factory auxiliary electric fan.