99 v5 aircon confusion?

[lacky75]

dont suppose any of u guys could help? just regased and oiled my air con only had 300gms of refridgerant instead of the 700 ish.

It all seems to be working well now but for some reason cant get the aircon to kick in on really cold mornings? however once the outside temp has heated up its ok?

is this just a part of the air con/climate control or poss a fault?

any suggestions are kindly welcome

 

[Markos1972]

In my Leon cupra,if the external temp was below 2 degrees then the climate control didnt run.Think this is a safety feature.

 

[lacky75]

that was a quick reply, thanx thought it was someting along those lines however it doesn't help on a cold morning trying to remove the moisture from the inside of the car

 

[Markos1972]

No worries matey-and welcome to the site.

 

[techie]

Spot on, the a/c wont switch on as the condensation formed inside the heater box could freeze and damage the evaporator.

 

[Muttley]

In summer use you aren't getting down to much below 7 degrees anyway. Trying to cool down inlet air that is already cold is a pretty pointless exercise.

In summer when it's wet, the inlet air can hold a lot of moisture so cooling it down to 6 degrees or so gets rid of most of it (cold air holds less moisture - the excess condenses out on the air cooler matrix then drops onto the road under the car). In winter the air is already cold and so holds very little moisture anyway. Simply by heating it up you get hot dry air.

The snag on cold mornings is that you have to wait for the engine to warm up enough to deliver heating to the passenger air heating matrix. But having the cooling ("aircon") on will not help anyway, even if it wasn't defeated in order to protect the matrix from freezing up. Incidentally, all the cabin air comes through the cooling matrix, so if it freezes up you get no cabin air blower at all . This is regarded as a bad thing