Running at about 200k miles on my 2015 Fit, ,the clutch on my compressor failed catastrophically - there were pieces of it laying on the bottom trim. I took it into a car AC place after explaining the problem, which told me there was nothing wrong except that it was low on freon, which they recharged for a fee. (You can imagine how I felt about this.)

Well, anyway, I ordered a compressor/condenser kit off RockAuto - I'd liked to have just replaced the clutch, but I figured it might have failed for a reason. Well, fortunately, it looks like the system is holding a charge great - no leaking. But of course in the box for the compressor was a checksheet, since obviously they don't want you to return the compressor for an unrelated issue. One thing I had not thought to check was the condenser fan. I turned the car on with the AC on and set to max cold, and at least within those couple of minutes, the condenser fan never kicked on. Now, this was with the old compressor (ie, the defective clutch), so maybe it "knows" the compressor is not actually on....does anyone know under what circumstances the fan is usually running? If it's all the time when the AC button is illuminated green then I definitely have a problem.

 

Well, I forged ahead and replaced the compressor. When I was charging the system, the condenser fan switched on pretty quickly. Maybe it does know if the compressor is actually running or not. So far, so good. Fingers crossed.

If you're ever needing to fix your AC on these cars, it's pretty easy to swap the compressor out. The biggest pain is getting to the top-left 10mm hose-bolt. Other than that, it's just four mounting bolts, the two hose mounting bolts, and disconnecting the clutch wire. Note that there are two "clips" on the wire connector: one on the bottom to slide it off the metal mount its sitting on, then another on the "top" to slide the compressor connector out. Other than that, you just need $200 worth of tools from Harbor Freight - a manifold gauge and a vacuum pump, to vacuum the system. Then just get a can of refrigerant from the auto store sized for the Fit (the label on the hood tells you the acceptable range) and dump the whole thing in there. Or you can feed it through the manifold gauges and go by pressure instead of weight.

I had ordered a new condenser too, and it doesn't look very hard, but I didn't bother. Probably should in most cases. It looks like it really was just a clutch issue on my compressor though - the oil looked clean and clear.