Help needed - major issues before holiday

[mr tickle]

I am travelling to France in 7 days with the wife 3 kids and a 20 foot boat.
I serviced the car a few weeks ago, passed the MOT had the aircon re-gassed and tinted the windows. Temps in France can reach 40 c and having good aircon is essential.

Today while having a look under the bonnet I noticed that my aircon condensor is leaking at the bottom (which is why its not as cold as it was a few weeks ago) and I have what looks like dried coolent stains splashed around the top left of the radiator and on the battery.

The levels of coolent have not dropped in the expansion tank so it's probably just a tiny leak when under pressure.

As I am now under time pressure i was going to remove both the water and air con rads and replace them both. I will replace it with new coolent and have to have it gassed again. I don't have time to waste investigating other items.

It look tricky but I can't afford to let a garage do this work. They will probably charge me around £500 for this work. I know that I can buy a new rad for £65 and an air con rad for £100.00 add in the 45 for a gas and some new coolent and I'm hoping to do the work for about £230.00.

It looks like I will have to remove the front bumper grille, the vertical bar in front of the cross member, the horns and may be the headlights?

Can someone please advice before I end up removing more things than i need to.

Many thanks

 

[solarman216]

yours is a bit later than mine so there may be differences, but I removed my AC rad simply by removing the front grill, but the rads do not usually go it is the pipes that corrode under the rubber clips, check these first, Rick

 

[solarman216]

Forgot to say, if you do fit a new AC rad then get the AC guys to vac it down first to remove any moisture, Rick

 

[rustic]

Forgot to say, if you do fit a new AC rad then get the AC guys to vac it down first to remove any moisture, Rick

This is also a legal requirement, as the air con gas mustn't be purposely released into the environment.
Huge fines are possible.
How this would be checked would be unknown

 

[solarman216]

Great big anomaly there Rustic, as a plumber I can purchase a can of pipe freezer and use it to save draining down to do a repair, and I am discharging this directly to atmosphere, there is no name on the gas on the can but as I work for a VETS needed to know if the gas was going to react with anything they used so vet contacted the company and we got a fax back R 134a the very same stuff in Car AC, Rick

 

[rustic]

Great big anomaly there Rustic, as a plumber I can purchase a can of pipe freezer and use it to save draining down to do a repair, and I am discharging this directly to atmosphere, there is no name on the gas on the can but as I work for a VETS needed to know if the gas was going to react with anything they used so vet contacted the company and we got a fax back R 134a the very same stuff in Car AC, Rick

Wow, yes I know about pipe freezer in a can, didn't know it was the same as car aircon gas. Cheaper than aircon gas... I wonder if you could use this in a car?
Ok no lubricant but...

The info I got was from the Guy at Halfords a week or two ago, when I had a "Free Aircon Pressure test" for the Picasso, when there was a funny smell, well the pressure test showed it was fine and up to pressure.:nenau
In fact the last few days it has been really working, could be better though.

Halfords have the pressure guage for the can of gas, which you can use on it's own around £20 and then you would but a can of gas which is a lot more.
With £10 deposit on the can.

Rustic

 

[rustic]

Just looked on the web re r 134a gas

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1,1,1,2-Tetrafluoroethane

There are conflicting reports, it is used as propellants even in air guns, but is banned in some States in the USA due to the damage to the environment.:doh:doh

 

[solarman216]

yep and when they ban that one in favour of of another that is not supposed to do any harm, a few years later and someone will say it does harm after all, never ending spiral of not knowingness by the powers that be that will never know what the world environment is all about let alone how to control it, king canute all over again, Rick

 

[mr tickle]

yours is a bit later than mine so there may be differences, but I removed my AC rad simply by removing the front grill, but the rads do not usually go it is the pipes that corrode under the rubber clips, check these first, Rick

Hi Rick

Do you mean the water rad pipes corrode or the condensor rad pipes?

If it's the water rad I'm guessing I can just clean up the rusty bits and re-tighten?

Actually I think my radiator pipes are plastic - I'll check later.

Thanks

 

[solarman216]

The ali air con pipes, most cars have experienced gas loss and so a dye is injected to try and trace the leak, Rick

 

[jims-terrano]

The popular spot that I've seen the pipes leak on here are follow the AC pipes to the front panel. There is a metal clamp that holds the pipes to the front panel and it's this point they seem to leak. I've seen a repair done to these pipes using some kind of plumbing compression joints and a flexi pipe. Zippy answered a similar post mentioning these a few weeks ago so it can't just be me that remembers this fix.

Don't get the AC system mixed up with the engine cooling system as they are two systems. Could be wrong but I don't think the AC has an expansion tank. Unless the regas contained a dye I doubt you would be able to tell exactly where the leak is.

 

[solarman216]

I did not explain properly, the dye used is usually green, and depending what coolant anti freeze was used the splaterings can be very similar when dry so can be hard to tell if coolant or AC leak detector, Rick

 

[mr tickle]

Thanks for the comments so far.

Tonight I started the stripdown:

removing the radiator is quite easy 15 minutes and the coolent is all collected (replaced last year) and rad in the garage.
It looks quite old and I think the leak was from the top left corner (when viewing from the front in situ)

Removing the air con condensor is a pain.

I tried wiggeling stretching and pulling but it's just too big to get past the frame.
Firstly I decided that I would take off the front bumper, remove the vertical cross member and horns and then it would come out easily.
The last person to remove the rad though had damaged the heads and most of the screws though. :doh

Instead I remove the drivers headlight and this gave me 1 more inch to just wiggle it through the gap and even then I had to bend both brackets that hold the condenser to the frame.

Tomorrow i will attempt to refit the new condenser in the reverse of above, i'm not looking forward to bending the new brackets and I'm concerned that I may possibly damage some of the fins squeezing it in.

has anyone else done this job on a 2001 -2004 T20 to advise?

 

[solarman216]

Thanks for the comments so far.

Tonight I started the stripdown:

removing the radiator is quite easy 15 minutes and the coolent is all collected (replaced last year) and rad in the garage.
It looks quite old and I think the leak was from the top left corner (when viewing from the front in situ)

Removing the air con condensor is a pain.

I tried wiggeling stretching and pulling but it's just too big to get past the frame.
Firstly I decided that I would take off the front bumper, remove the vertical cross member and horns and then it would come out easily.
The last person to remove the rad though had damaged the heads and most of the screws though. :doh

Instead I remove the drivers headlight and this gave me 1 more inch to just wiggle it through the gap and even then I had to bend both brackets that hold the condenser to the frame.

Tomorrow i will attempt to refit the new condenser in the reverse of above, i'm not looking forward to bending the new brackets and I'm concerned that I may possibly damage some of the fins squeezing it in.

has else done this job on a 2001 -2004 T20 to advise?

Clearly your model is different to my 96 version, is there evidence of leakage on the old condenser, if not then the pipes will be at fault, Rick

 

[geoffdown]

Thanks for the comments so far.

Tonight I started the stripdown:

removing the radiator is quite easy 15 minutes and the coolent is all collected (replaced last year) and rad in the garage.
It looks quite old and I think the leak was from the top left corner (when viewing from the front in situ)

Removing the air con condensor is a pain.

I tried wiggeling stretching and pulling but it's just too big to get past the frame.
Firstly I decided that I would take off the front bumper, remove the vertical cross member and horns and then it would come out easily.
The last person to remove the rad though had damaged the heads and most of the screws though. :doh

Instead I remove the drivers headlight and this gave me 1 more inch to just wiggle it through the gap and even then I had to bend both brackets that hold the condenser to the frame.

Tomorrow i will attempt to refit the new condenser in the reverse of above, i'm not looking forward to bending the new brackets and I'm concerned that I may possibly damage some of the fins squeezing it in.

has anyone else done this job on a 2001 -2004 T20 to advise?

I did mine 3 weeks ago and all I did was remove front grill and bumper and aircon fan then just undone the aircon rad bolts and the metal strut that runs in the middle it has blots at the bottom just undone them and pulled the strut out the way and out it came took me 20min to take out and replace with new condenser but then found the nuts on the pipes that connects to the condenser had striped the threads from the old condenser I managed with a sharp metal pick to clean up the nuts and now have it all connected but if u cant clean up the high pressure pipe with service valve in its nissan only £81+vat but big but nissan dont have any in this country and its a 3-4 week wait for part good luck and hope what I have written makes sense sorry for using "aircon rad" first of then changing to the correct word and my car is a 2000 X reg:thumb2

 

[mr tickle]

Rick

There is evidence of leakage from the condenser. But you are correct in saying that the rubber sleeves can cause corrosion too. I have also had to remove a 2" section of the 8mm pipe due to this. I bought A straight connector for £3.00 to correct this. (See earlier post)

 

[mr tickle]

Rick.

Clearly my setup is different than yours.

Geoff

If i remove the bumper the job will be easy. My problem is that some muppet has damaged almost all of the screws that hold the bumper on. Why do people do that, I always try and replace old screws with new where possible. :doh

Its a bad design that in order to remove the one bolt that holds the bottom vertical cross member is covered by the bumper

If I can't get the condenser in without damage I will have to drill out lots of screws and remove bumper.

Does anyone know where i can get a load of the correct screws?

 

[geoffdown]

Rick.

Clearly my setup is different than yours.

Geoff

If i remove the bumper the job will be easy. My problem is that some muppet has damaged almost all of the screws that hold the bumper on. Why do people do that, I always try and replace old screws with new where possible. :doh

Its a bad design that in order to remove the one bolt that holds the bottom vertical cross member is covered by the bumper

If I can't get the condenser in without damage I will have to drill out lots of screws and remove bumper.

Does anyone know where i can get a load of the correct screws?

My bumpers been off so many times its only held no to car by the 4 bolts to the chassis and the 2 plastic clips either side of the wing:augie but hasn't moved or fallen off in 2 years:lol

 

[mr tickle]

Update

After removing the fan attached to the water pump I was able "just" to fit the condenser.

Car is back together now.

Fingers crossed that when I have the car re-gassed it holds the pressure for the duration of my holiday at least.

Conclusion:

On the later model T20 (2000-2004?)when fitting a new condenser it is possible to squeeze it in without removing the bumper, but you will have to remove:
The rad
the fan blades
One of the headlight
The grille.

Thanks for you help guys

 

[mr tickle]

Good news

No leaks on Air con nice and cold now.:thumbs

Thanks all.