Air conditioning leak ?

[DRC]

My 1999 996 C4 Coupe has an air conditioning problem with following symptoms :

1) 3 weeks ago, first noticed condensation dripping from undertray between front wheels (instead of usual drips from a/c pipes down length of rhs of car)

2) last 2 days, the a/c has started to get noisy (behind the dash)

3) yesterday, after a day parked in my work's car park, I noticed a small pool of clear oily liquid had dripped from the back of the long a/c pipes exactly from the area of the rear of the 2 mountings.

At home last night I took off the rear mount & rubber bushes to clean it all up, and couldn't find any damage to the pipes or obvious place for the leak. There's no sign of any leak in my garage either, so it looks like sudden loss of fluid during the day.

Running the a/c now does seem to cool but maybe not as much as it did, & the long return pipe certainly doesn't get cold enough to condense. I've switched it off today in case I'm doing more damage to the a/c components... bad news because it's the hottest day of the year so far in UK ! Now there are no further signs of leaking.

I'd guess there's a fracture in the pipe under the mounting, but not sure about the oily liquid as I thought a/c ran on refrigerant gas.

Ever come across anything like this before & might it have damaged the compressor/pump ? Thanks in advance for any info.

Dave C

[cpee]

That sounds suspiciously like the problem I have. There are a couple of black aluminum a/c tubes that run front to back on the passenger side (drivers side for you I guess) and I had a leak right at one of the clips that hold them to the underside of the car. The dealer is replacing both tubes. It seems like a co-incidence that both would fail but maybe it's a precaution or perhaps they're incapable of figuring out which of the two has failed. A couple of hundred $$ for the parts and 3 hours labour. The bad news is that one of the tubes is on back order until the end of June! All in all, pretty poor. It took 2 1/2 weeks to get an appointment to have them look at the a/c plus a check engine light problem. They had it in the shop for nearly two weeks after which I still have to wait another 4 weeks for the tube to arrive. That's well over 2 months to fix a simple a/c problem. Assuming it's done by the end of the month that is.

Colin

[cpee]

To answer your other point, there is oil in the system to lubricate the compressor. You've likely lost only a small amount of the total and it's unlikely to have caused any damage. I'd be inclined to keep the air off until it's been checked out however.

Colin

[DRC]

Thanks Colin,

seems to be exactly the same problem... sorry to hear it's taking so long to get the parts. Any idea what causes the pipe to fail at the mount ? Could be fatigue, but the rubber mounts look like they should support the pipes well enough.

Dave

[cpee]

I'm not sure what caused the problem. About all I can think of is corrosion under the clamp or some sort of road debris clobbering it. I see no physical damage however and haven't looked under the clamp. Perhaps I should. It seems strange that we should see the exact same fault. Perhaps it's just a weird coincidence and you an I are the only ones who will ever get the problem or perhaps we're just the first of many!! Lets hope not.

Colin