Hi All

Has anyone ever had the A/C compressor shut down and not restart?

This is what happen to me. I was tooling along in EV coming to a stoplight that was green. The light turned yellow, so I floored it to safely make the light. Just a quick burst which started the ICE and brought me to the speed limit. The A/C was in the normal recir mode already, so I exspected some cool air as I was coasting in neutral with ICE-ON after making the light. No cool air came, so I turned the A/C off and back on again a few times hoping the compressor clutch would engage, but no luck. At this point, I decided to pull over and cycle the key off and on. No luck again.

My wife's work was where I was headed to meet her for lunch, so I pulled in two miles ahead and turned the engine off and poped the hood to check the belt and take a look to see if the compressor would engage when I restarted the engine. It took a few minutes to check things out and I then I restarted the engine to check the compressor clutch. The clutch was not engaging still.

It was about 92 degrees at lunch time, and I did not want to continue driving without battery A/C. The dealership was about 3 miles away, so I had my wife follow me the the dealership to drop it off and have it checked out.

It took about 10 minutes for a service Rep. to get to me and explain the problem. He got in and started the ICE and checked the A/C. It started working great again and since that time.

This is the only time this has happen to me, anyone else?

GaryG

 

Other than the leaking o-rings this is the first a/c problem I have heard about. Did the service guy have any explaination of has he heard of any issues like this?

I used my a/c to cool the cabin maybe half a dozen times this summer so I wouldn't know mine wasn't working for months. Especially this time of year - already using the heat and expecting the first frost any day now.

How it was just a fluke and doesn't come back again.

 

The service Rep. only said it must have been a computer glitch or something. Those guys no better than to add to the fire by telling me other's problems.

The only thing that I can think of, is how the A/C normally shuts off under hard acceleration. Maybe an error occurred and took awhile to reset after so many key on and key off's. I thought also the TBCM must have been requesting the PCM to turn on the compressor. The battery had to be getting to hot by then. I notice my MPG average really started to climb without that compressor dragging the ICE down.

I've really been getting great mileage with the A/C on this summer over last. Running the cabin A/C seems to keep the battery performming much better for EV. My mileage seems to drop without the cabin A/C with a lot of EV driving. Also, I had the SG this summer to watch FE much better over last year. If no one is riding with me (wife mainly), I just roll down the windows when normal recir is off at long traffic lights or long stops. The worst tank this summer was just under 42mpg. On a good 40+ mile daily round trip to WPB, I still can hit 50mpg with the A/C on normal recir. I'm pretty sure this winter is going to change my MTE pic to over 800 miles. Of course, I'm going for 999 MTE, and an 80+ MPG 20 mile round trip as my goal. Pushing limits with the A/C is like training with weights, and I feel like I'm ready to roll when it get's cool here. Don't know if it's going to be a heavy snowbird season (traffic), but I found some new roads that should help me out.

GaryG

 

Many vehicles have a floor mounted switch under the accelerator pedal which closes to indicate WOT when enough foot pressure is applied. My guess would be that the WOT switch got stuck closed when you went WOT to accelerate through that amber traffic light.

A/C is always disabled at WOT.

 

You could be looking for this switch for a long time. Ford has never used a switch under the accelerator pedal on any model. It's always been a function of the PCM strategy and the throttle position sensor on the throttle body.

 

The Hybrid uses throttle by wire.