So the journey for fully working A/C continues. The car is sitting at a dealer over the weekend as the A/C has gotten 'warm' again, and instead of waiting for it to fully empty and potentially having difficulty driving like the last time, we're now driving a focus for the weekend and going to wait for the dealer to try to find the leak on Monday morning.

I'll have to see if they can find it this time, I'm hoping it's similar to gpsman's experience with the o-rings and it's in and out quickly, and hopefully fixed this time.

I guess it's taken about a month and a half for it to drain (but not fully) we still get a bit of luke warm air :|

jeff.

 

They should be able to find it. I'm pretty sure they have a flourescent dye (like they use for radiators and oil leaks) that I think they can add to the system... wherever it leaks it'll glow like its radioactive under a blacklight.

 

Yes they do... The problem is that last time it was in for this, they put the dye in, and couldn't find the leak, so they returned it to me. So this is the second time it's in for the same thing. So somehow their dye search didn't return any results. Hopefully this time they'll see something.

 

I wonder if they know enough to "check in the back" or if they think its like an ordinary A/C and only has connections up front....

 

Yeah I'm not sure... the people who will be looking at it won't be in until Monday morning, at which point when I call if they haven't found it I'll ask if they've looked in the back.

gpsman: Do you know where the o-rings were located that caused your A/C problems?

jeff.

 

So I guess at least initially it wasn't the same o-ring problem.

I got a call Monday afternoon stating that they found the problem, and that unfortunately it won't be a warrenty item, as we caused the damage and there'd be a $600 bill for them to fix it.

Now we haven't been in any situation where the damage could have been caused, and the position of the damage would lead one to believe that if there was enough contact to cause the damage, there would be some damage to the bumper (paint etc.)

Furthermore, we've never had working A/C, we purchased the car as a demo model in November, and when it finally got warm enough to attempt to use the A/C at the end of april, we were always blowing warm air.

As this wasn't the dealer we purchased the vehicle from, I'm sure they had absolutely no interest in believing me or any interest in helping us.

So after a trip to our original dealer (the service manager took one look at
it, confirmed that they would take care of it for us) and about 1 day later we now have functioning A/C, and everything seems to be back to normal. Now it'll be a matter of time to see if there happens to be a leak elsewhere in the system, but initial inspection seems to show that things should be ok.

Before:
(Condenser, sitting in front of car, looking diagonally to the passenger side through the hole in the front bumper, sorry for the smushed bugs)




After:
(Not sure why this one is black...)

 

It looks like the "demo" car was in a collision and that body work was done but the A/C radiator was overlooked.

 

Jeff,

Don't know if you're still here since it's a month later. I put a recent post on that has a similar problem. I do shut down to EV though. To be be redundant in my other post I get high RPM's (red line) and no acceleration when it's hot. My A/C is cool but not cold as I had stated. No codes and the dealers computer has no errors. I'll run it by them with the coolant leaks etc. Did you finally get your problem solved? If so what was the fix. BTW Ford does not have any records of this type of problem. I think it really needs to be if it's a little more frequent than just "me".
Brandy

 

Brandy,

gpsman1 had some problems with a leak with some o-rings that they seemed to be able to find, mine was or seems to have just been the damaged condenser as shown in the pictures above. So far we haven't noticed any problems with the A/C since this was fixed, but last time it did take about a month and a half for the A/C to empty again... so far so good.

If it's gone from cold to cool, they'll inject a dye to attempt to find the problem and send you on your way. Not sure if it's been a widespread problem or not, but I'm pretty sure that mine was simply related to the apparent damage.

jeff.

 

Or was damaged in transit from the factory.

The trucking companies run their own body shops (I guess they do enough damage to warrant such), and don't tell Ford or the dealer about any in-transit repairs which happen. The only clue, is that transportation took a few days longer than "normal" because of the detour to their nearest body shop.