Searched the forums for a little while and found some advice under the GE section. I'm hoping I'm just low on refrigerant.

2007 Sport model that I just picked up a few months ago. The A/C has worked most of the time, but there are times when it is intermittent: blows cold, then warm, then cold again. I initially thought it had to do with air in the line because I had just had the radiator flushed out and there was some gurgling noise at the time. Over the weeks, the A/C seemed to work fine and the air bubbles seem to have disappeared because there was no more gurgling. But now, it acted up again today. While I don't have the screening (yet) in front of the heat exchanger, I don't see that it is too badly damaged. Nonetheless, can you point me towards some old threads, or share some new insights as to why my 2007's A/C seems to be stingy on the cold air sometimes? I printed off a Honda coupon for $50 off a 2 can with dye recharge, but wasn't sure what such a service would cost given the hefty $50 off. Thanks in advance.

 

The AC operation has nothing to do with the coolant in the radiator or flushing the radiator.

Switching off and on is usually associated the the amount of R-134 (refrigerant) in the system. The switching problem is either the high pressure limit, the low pressure limit, or the evaporator temperature limit being sensed. All of these are caused by the incorrect amount of R-134 in the system. Any good AC mechanic can determine if this is the problem in a few minutes by looking at a set of AC gauges attached to the car's AC system. Less competent mechanics will attach your car to an AC recharge machine. They will remove the R-134 completely from the system and then recharge it with the correct amount of refrigerant not knowing if that was the problem or not. In the end if it fixes your problem it is a who cares situation.

Take it to someone who does AC recharging for a check out.

 

When you floor it, the compressor seems to shut off and you get non-cooled air for a short time, is that what's happening? It's a way of diverting power back to the wheels.

 

It's normal. The A/C cycles on and off for these cars. The two replies you received above are from people who don't even own the same car as you.

It's not due to low refrigerant, and it'll do it even if you aren't flooring the gas. It's more noticeable on a really hot day and if you have the vent blowing right at you, then you can tell exactly when the a/c cycles on/off.

 

There is a difference between cycling and shutting down. Cycling is normal and more pronounced when the AC is set for less than full fan speed. You do not normally notice the temperature change much inside because the cycling is brief and the vent temperatures usually vary less than 4 degrees during cycling. Shutting down is a completely different issue.

As the 3rd poster stated, due to the low horsepower of the Honda Fit engine, the AC is intentionally shut down under heavy acceleration to allow more power to the drive train. If that is the shut down you are experiencing, then it is normal.

Yes, I do own and drive two Honda Fits and I maintain 2 Honda accords for my 91 year old Mother and 25 year old niece.

On the 09 Fit I did have a problem of shutting down on days over 90 degrees OAT. In the summer of 2010 I decided to fix it. It turned out that Honda had slightly over charged it and on hot days the system it was exceeding the high pressure limit which is slightly over 400 PSI on the high side. It took me a while to figure out what was going on. Removing about 1.5 ounces of R-134 took care of the problem for the 2010 through 2013 seasons.

If yours has worked fine in past summers, then you can not be over charged but you could be low.

Another thing you can do to help is run on recirculate. If the car has been parked in the sun then the inside temperature is usually higher than the outside air. Under those conditions I usually start using outside air first. When the air inside the car has cooled down, I switch to recirculate. Most automotive AC systems will drop the air temperature by around 35 degrees. With exact tuning (charging) a 40 degree drop is possible. A 35 degree drop on already cooled inside recirculated air is better that a 35 degree drop on the hotter outside air.

Good luck.

 

When is it happening. Sometimes on long runs the system ices up so you get hotter air until it unfreezes and the cycle starts over again. But this is again a problem of the refrigerant levels and can be checked quickly like other members have said.

 

wow, thanks to all of you. I had no idea that a car's A/C could behave like that. Since I have not owned the car for more than 3 months, I don't have a good understanding of when the incidents are happening. I can tell you that the car has not been on a long trip since I have owned it, so I can't attest to the others who have written that their A/C seems to shut down after a few hours due to the icing problem. Nor have I gunned the car to attempt to experience the full shut down due to power transfer. I can however feel the temperature cycle up/down when I put my hand up to the vents. When it is at its coldest, it blows colder than any air conditioner I have encountered. But then it seems to drop off. Only once have I personally experienced a time when I thought the air was "warm." Another family member said that the entire trip home (5 miles) was warm and the air never got cold. I did notice a nice healthy size puddle of water under the back side of the engine last night, so I know the drain appears to be functioning properly.
If you all believe that it is better for me to take the car in to my mechanic and ask him to hook it up to the two-gauge monitor so the freon level can be documented, I will do that instead of rushing into my local Honda dealer and spend $235 minus the $50 coupon to have them put in up to 2 cans of freon. Thanks to all of you for taking the time to respond.

 

Let us know how this plays out. The Fit has notoriously underpowered AC, so I'm curious.

 

I'm definitely curious to see the outcome of this one as well. I live in a subtropical island and never thought the a/c was underpowered. The engine on the other now that is!

 

Of course I'll keep you updated; my pleasure. I drove it all morning and the A/C worked fine again with nice cold air coming out. I'll take it out again this afternoon with the high humidity. I am inclined to go to my mechanic and have him read out the freon and pressure level before taking any corrective action. Stay tuned.

 

Here is something you can try. For about $10.00 you can get a digital meat thermometer in the housewares section at Walmart. The thermometer has a head on it about the size of a half dollar and about a 6" long chrome tube sticking out of the back. Buy one and stick it into the AC vent. Now you will be able to see the temperature of the air coming out of the vent. Most vehicles cycle off the AC at around 45 degrees vent temperature. I modified a few of my non-Honda vehicles to go down to 39 to 40. If you go any cooler you will freeze up the evaporator and then air flow and air cooling will be restricted. If the temps ever goes below 40 then a little more refrigerant in the system will help prevent that. I have a Blazer here that does go be low 40 and occasionally freezes up. I could add some R-134 but freeze ups happen so rarely that it is just as easy for me to turn of the AC and leave the fan running for a few minutes to melt the ice. If yours is freezing up, running on recirculate will reduce the number of times this freeze up occurs. Running the same air through the AC system over and over reduces the amount of moisture that needs to be extracted.

With that thermometer you can also see the difference of running the AC on recirculate and outside air.

 

thanks nc9v. I just drove it for about two hours, non consecutive and it worked just fine again. I'm going to have my mechanic hook it up to his gauges and determine the level of freon (if that is what the dials can determine). I like your write up however and will discuss that with my mechanic. Your words will make me sound more intelligent when I talk to him. He did mention that he wants to have the car when it is really hot out. He said that the values are misleading on cloudy or cool days. I shouldn't have to wait too long for the heat. I'll keep you all updated.

 

Yes I'm talking about cycling on/off as well.

I don't know how much the temperature cycles, but if we assume it's 4 degrees like you say, that's a large enough temperature difference that anybody with an uninjured nervous system and healthy thermoreceptors in their skin should be able to feel easily, especially if the vent is blowing on one part of the body while the other parts of the body are exposed to the hot environment (interior of the car) on a really hot day.

Think of this, healthy body temperature is ~98.6 F, and just 4 more degrees is 102.6 F, which feels a lot hotter in my opinion. Just like 73 feels a lot cooler than 77 when you set your home thermostat or the temperature in a car with automatic climate control.

I just know the a/c cycles on and off for the first generation Fit, it's normal, and I can feel the difference when it's cycling on a really hot day (as the average person should).

 

Yes the gauges will display the pressures of the freon (really R-134 refrigerant). There are two numbers and they are related to the pressures on the input side of the compressor and the output side of the compressor. A skilled mechanic can look at these pressures and after compensating for Outside Air Temperature determine if the refrigerant charge is high, low, or OK. Yes, it is much easier for him to determine this on a hot day.

The AC system is a closed system and it is continually recirculating the refrigerant. On the input (low) side of the compressor the R-134 is a gas and is at a pressure of around 30 to 45 PSI. (This pressure varies primarily on outside air temperature.) The compressor compresses the gas down to a hot liquid. (The liquid is around 250 to 400 PSI again dependent on ambient temperature.) That hot liquid is then sent to the condenser located in front of the car radiator for cooling. After that the cooler liquid is sent to the evaporator located in your heating /AC system under the dash. The liquid is then converted back to a gas in the evaporator and the gas cools the surrounding metal evaporator (it looks like a radiator). Your cabin air is blown across / through the evaporator and into the vehicle cabin to keep you cool. The R-134 gas is then returned to the compressor where the cycle starts all over again.

I'm sure this is more information than you need. We could go into pages of additional detail on ideal pressures vs, temperatures, moisture removal, ideal temperature drop, etc., but for what you need these are the basics.

A well (AC) tuned Honda Fit will keep you cool. Occasionally we need to vary the amount of refrigerant slightly to accomplish what you want. Usually just going with the factory specified charge is all that is required.

Side note: different refrigerants, like R-12, R22, Duracool, and ammonia. all work at different pressures but the system operation is still basically the same.

If you want or need more info, feel to PM me off or on net.

Good luck and please let us know what you find.

 

A/C on the 2007 Fit was hooked up to their gauges and it was just fine; within numerical specifications. He said the upper and lower numbers, but I forgot them. I think it was 190 upper and 35 lower, but I wouldn't put a win, place, or show on it.
And as I have posted elsewhere, I found the leak into the spare tire well. There was a 2-3 inch hairline crack coming from under the end of the roof rail rubber strip, leading down past the hatch hinge on the passenger side. I sealed it with silicone and no more water dripping in.

 

Just wanted to add that I'm watching this thread as well as I'm experiencing the same thing. I've had my '07 Fit Sport since it was brand new with 6 miles on the odometer and it's been a great car. After putting 195,000 miles on the car for this to be the only thing to have gone wrong is pretty good in my book.

Over the last couple of years, I've had the evaporator freeze up a few times on long road trips. Generally this would happen if the A/C was on fresh air, max fan and I'd notice the airflow would become reduced until there was hardly anything coming out of the vents at all. A quick fix for this would be to crank up the heat full blast for about 30 seconds to a minute and sweat it out. This would be enough to melt the freeze up and all would be good again. That worked a lot quicker for me than just turning off the A/C or parking the car for a half hour which is often impractical. Since it happened so rarely and was cured so easily, I never looked further into what was causing it to do that.

This year it's different. The aircon will be running fine and then it will just shut off completely as if I had hit the A/C button. Warm air blows out. No change in airflow so it's not getting froze up like before. The amount of time it stays off seems random. Sometimes it's only five minutes, sometimes it's 20. Pressing the A/C button, changing to recirculate, stopping the car and starting again doesn't really seem to have any effect. Just as suddenly and unexpectedly as it goes off, it comes back nice and cold! I'm very familiar with the normal cycling of the air conditioning. To me, that's barely perceptible unless you're really looking for it. It's always kept me comfortable even in triple digit heat. I'm more apt to notice when it does cycle back on the little blast of water vapor coming out of the vents or the humidity condensing on the plastic. This is different. It's off long enough to make you go from comfortable to sweating enough to make your seats damp when you get out of the car! It seemed to happen more often if I had the fan on full blast versus just 1 or 2 but now it's happening no matter what the fan speed is, although it's been hotter than it has been since last year these past few days. I saw a coupon on a local dealer's service site a couple weeks ago for a free air conditioning system inspection. Of course now that I need it, it's not there!

I've been reading a lot of threads about this as well. On the one hand I hope it's something as simple as needing a recharge, but on the other hand if it needs recharged, then something else is probably wrong causing it to leak. Looks like some people suspect the temperature sensor inside the evaporator assembly could be to blame and that this could be a costly repair. I'm just going to have to take it in soon but would love to hear what someone else in the same situation finds out so I can know what to expect and have an idea of what I'm in for. If I'm lucky, maybe it's something simple enough I can do myself and save some money!

 

sorry you are having these troubles with your A/C. As far as the free inspections, yes, I've seen all the coupons on the various Honda dealer's websites. The free ones are for visual inspection only. I don't see what on earth that would do for anyone. Some other dealers have coupons for $30 which involves actually hooking some equipment up. In the end, I'm left giving the same advice I've given for decades. Find yourself a great mechanic in your area and form a relationship. The internet is great for helping you do the homework to find that great mechanic. I paid nothing today for having my mechanic hook his equipment up to my Fit. It certainly did not take them long, but it was better than someone doing a visual looking for frozen lines or escaping gas, or listening for the condenser to go on/off. We all can do that. My opinion of the trustworthiness of dealerships is a ZERO on the scale of 1-10. You are more likely to have them charge you for something that is not needed since they don't really care about your car at all. They are just there to make money. My mechanic cares about both me and my car and would like to stay in business. He has done so by not ripping off people for decades and having us loyal subjects spread the word to others.

 

I'm glad you have a mechanic like that who you trust. I do not. One of the reasons for me choosing this vehicle over others when purchasing a new car was reliability. I don't have a relationship with a mechanic because I haven't needed one other than for the 100k service. I did some research online and went on some verbal suggestions and chose a local mechanic to perform the service (other than the valve clearance adjustment) and when I got the car back, it gurgled because there was all kinds of air in the radiator. I found out from reading threads here the problem was the hose inside the overflow came disconnected from the cap and was sitting at the bottom of the tank. I also found out he didn't fully flush it but simply emptied it and refilled it. I later on found out one of the spark plugs he put in wasn't tightened properly as the boot of the coil pack was stained with oil. I did my own plug change after that. The valve clearance adjustment was done at a dealer which I've written a whole thread about here. Eventually I was made good on it after contacting Honda corporate.

If I bought a Lada I'd expect to have a real good relationship with a mechanic by now but being that this is the first thing that's ever gone wrong with my car, I don't have a relationship with one. I'm finding a lot of the online review sites are getting flooded with fake reviews. I found one local repair place where the guy commented on a 1 star review that said he was the best mechanic ever, etc., and he wrote to say he knew the review was really supposed to be for 5 stars and not one because it was his own mother who made the review and inadvertently selected the wrong option! A lot of them you can tell it's the shop owner making the comments himself. One had the same spelling mistakes in nearly every review! It's also hard finding one that doesn't only work 9-5 M-F. Having only one car means I'm going to be there waiting for the repair to be done. Unfortunately dealerships are the most apt to have the best hours to accommodate my schedule and are also the most likely to have the parts I need on hand. If I do end up going to a dealership for this, it'll be a different one than the one which told me the 100k valve clearance inspection is done by listening to the engine from the drivers seat.

I'm not getting anything done immediately but I've got a couple of 1,000 mile road trips coming up along with a 3,500 mile one that I'd like to have it done before. At the moment I'm surviving. It worked completely fine yesterday and today so far. So I'll be watching intently to see what your trusted mechanic comes up with so I can use those results as a guide for my own diagnosis and see what I'm in for.

 

Unless you live in the hinterland where there isn't a mechanic in sight, in any suburban or urban area there are mechanics worth going to. Car guys provides a good reference tool for finding one, neighborhoods print "sweet lists," and word of mouth when many mouths are saying the same thing is a great way to find a trustworthy mechanic. Since money is tight, the only way I set foot in a dealership for any repair is when they have "get you in the door" coupons. Some of their service coupons are pretty darn cheap, so I take advantage of them. I'm also "casting my line" on some of my maintenance needs to see which dealers are hungry for my business. I now know they don't just follow the "book's hourly rate" when they are hungry for a meal. However, I will not allow a dealer to do any significant tear down on my car. Dealers tend to (IMO) hire the worst of the worst mechanics who are there to get it done quickly to maximize dealer profit. My mechanic is outstanding. I have three outstanding ones to choose from in my suburban area. There are at least 3 more I could go to if I wanted to drive 10 miles. This information didn't magically come to me; I spent many years researching good mechanics because I knew (at that time) I still had 50 years of car ownership to go. I just had my next door neighbor tell me how "wonderful" her dealership experience was and that she got out of there for only $400 and got her rotors turned. Wow, what a bargain. I do hate to see people throw their hard earned money away, but in the end, you just can't talk sense into some people.

 

I had the icing problem on a 300 mile drive through Florida. During the last 50 miles, the system stopped blowing cold air. That evening, I looked under the car and water was pouring out. As I had recently bought the car, this scared the h--- out of me. The next day, the system worked fine again. In fact, the system iced because the freon was low. Once some was added, all was well again.