Hey y'all. I've been hunting down an A/C leak in our 09 Fit Sport for quite some time now. It's had a leak for a couple years, and required a recharge once a year. Now it's to the point where it'll all leak out in one week. In that time, the same shop has looked at it and recharged it, saying there was no leak. On the most recent trip a couple months ago, they said there was a leak in the condenser. I don't think they were right, but I replaced it anyway because the car had been in a front-end fender bender in 2018 before we purchased it in 2019.

My inkling is that my install of the new condenser wasn't perfect, or the A/C discharge line (High side) has a leak.

I've recharged the A/C fully once myself, and then this weekend I put just a couple of ounces in to perform a leak test. Neither time did the UV dye turn up anything, as far as I can tell. There were some old splatters from before, and I can't seem to clean them off no matter what I use. I took pictures of them anyway, just in case they're from the original source of the leak. Those are attached. To be clear, the UV dye is from before today, I'm pretty sure.

This time I also had this leak detector. The highest I set the sensitivity was 3, but mostly had it at 2. It was pretty sporadic at where it would alert at, but it alerted a couple of times at the High side pipe and hose. And there is some sort of build up around the High side port where it meets the metal line.

It also alerted to the evaporator core pretty solidly one time, but I'm a little doubtful of that.

At this point, I'm not 100% confident in this diagnostic. The A/C discharge hose is $132 for OEM, or $50 for non-OEM, and I'm hesitant to replace it if I'm not 100% confident.

Also, there was a smell in the cabin when using the A/C since I did the full recharge, and again this time with the small recharge. Is that a sign of a leaking evaporator core?

I'm posting here to see if anyone has some guidance. Perhaps I missed something, or could perform some further diagnostics that I'm not aware of. I understand that some folks will say to leave it to the professionals, but I really don't feel like putting $2,000 into an A/C repair.

 

I probably can't offer too much assistance, but the one thing I didn't see mentioned was the actual Schrader valve cores of both the High and Low ports. Check at these 2 points with your sniffer and the caps off. If you have a valve core tool just see if they are tight, but the sniffer should indicate.

 

Good call! Thank you!

 

I have a GE9 JDM with AC problem since I got it, after months of back and forth with various mechanics and an AC expert, discovered it was indeed the evap core. Cost about 2800$ CAD to fix parts imported from japan and 9 hours of labour to replace the core. Runs 100% now, and no issues for the past few months. Runs much colder than other cars even when both are on "LO" setting hehe

 

I’d second the above checking out evap core again as possible suspect if the valves check out clean.. as good as these cars are, they aren’t getting any younger and if the evap got dirty long ago it could have corroded and have a pinhole leak now that has grown with time