Questions about replacing a 2008 ac compressor

Your problem is going to be the evaporator usually in these cars and that's in the dash the whole car inside has to come apart it's about a well very long job very labor-intensive lots of plastic lots of possibility to break things even more that sort of thing in my world just puts that car to spring fall and winter use because I have three or four of them so the other ones with the working air would be used in the summer. I don't know about Toyota telling everybody compressors exploded what happened to yours did it explode or it just stopped working or it ran low on gas and ran at $9,000 RPMs for about a week straight because you just kept turning it up higher thinking I don't know what one would think but anyway so there's always that you'd have to disconnect major hoses and blow through them or something to see the receiver dryer is built to the condenser I believe so if you get a new condenser because yours is damaged down at the bottom and fins are all bent up probably a good idea that way you get a new desiccant sack filter dryer whatever you want to call it that won't be full of anything It's possible to take the compressor off turn it over on a white paper towel and let it stand like that for a couple hours some oil will probably come running out possibly with metal shavings in it they'll be like silver shavings in this yellowish color looking oil I do believe of course there should be some that's the nature of the air conditioning compressor revolving. But it shouldn't be excessive like an explosion look where there would be a very big ratio of metal to oil that's where I would start before I start buying parts

 

Open the compressor cover and you will see something like this. Small chips from the impeller are carried throughout the system by the refrigerant.

 

this happened to my 07 Camry hybrid, the ac compressor blew up inside. Metal fragments everywhere. Cause of the blow up, evaporator leaking slowly over time which depletes the refrigerant oil needed to lubricate the compressor.

At a minimum you could just try buy an eBay used compressor (around $100+ or less) and then replace the condenser and drier (the new condenser will have the drier inside installed) Most of the fragments will get stuck in the condenser and in the drier. Just to be safe you can also replace the expansion valve but it's not that easy access.

In my case I first purchased the ac compressor from eBay and then see if it runs well. I could still smell refrigerant in the cabin and ended up tearing the dash to replace the evaporator. Not a bad job but took me the entire weekend just for the evaporator.

 

It is on the evaporator, so no, not easy access. I believe Toyota moved it forward into the engine compartment on the 3rd generation Prius, so that it could be serviced without having to tear the dash out.

Speaking of better designs, in this video

the "Car Wizard" works on a VW Passat. The heater core on that model is super easy to service. See in the video starting at around 5:30. On most cars it is buried in the dash, often behind the evaporator. If only cars were designed so that both the evaporator and the heater core could be replaced without the 10 hour (each) dash disassembly/assembly.

 

Yeah my Corolla is through the '90s you could whip out that box in 30 minutes and then all the BS happened all these electronic servos and so on and a bunch of extra wiring and of course you got to have all that plastic trim and nonsense in the way because that's what folks need to see.

 

the gen1 Honda odyssey (and probably gen2) has the evaporator located under the passenger kick panel, easy and quick replacement when my friends van (2002) compressor seized. I have 2 gen2 odysseys and haven't serviced them but for sure it's the same design (the accord might have that design too)

 

An old Ford I had split the HVAC case into a part on each side of the firewall. The evaporator was in the part on the engine side. The heater core was on the cabin side, behind the glove box, with its gozinta and gozouta poking through a firewall grommet. The hoses attached on the engine side.

Changing the heater core was a matter of draining some coolant, loosening the hoses in the engine compartment, opening the panel behind the glove box and popping the heater core out.

For the evaporator, you could just open the engine-compartment side of the plastic box. If you had a helper, two of you could lift the whole A/C system right out of the engine compartment, hoses and all, without opening it or losing any refrigerant, if you wanted space to work on something else. (Had to push the engine wire harness out through its firewall grommet first, as otherwise it went through the A/C hose loop.)

 

Yes. According to the 1998-2022 Accord service manual the evaporator is indeed behind/beneath the glove box. But it is 6 of one half dozen of the other, because the heater core is buried in the center of the dash. After unhooking the lines to it, take out the dash, take out the air handling unit, then pull the heater core out of it. The core is inserted at a 40(?) degree angle into the air handler almost like an old VCR cassette into its slot. Had the core been mounted perpendicular to the firewall, between the evaporator and the air handler, then it might have been possible to get it out easily. But it isn't.

 

Yeah old trucks and GM products and stuff like that AC in and out was no problem plenty of room to work and all of that once you flip over to a Vega and other vehicles things get a lot less easier and then fast forward up to about after 1995 and Toyota things get really kind of awkward for these repairs and cost skyrocket but then those cars are used and really cheap so relegate it to winter use and grab another one of the many I used to have tercels and all that kind of stuff and was in Western Massachusetts so you could just throw one in the dirt and pull another one from the tow lot keep getting it they weren't worth generally doing all that repair work Just drive it when it's cooler out You got another one you drive when it's real hot if that's what you need certainly spending three grand worth of labor on a car that's 17 years old might not be a thing especially for comfort when I'm not talking the brakes here

 

Suburban and urban drivers rarely have the space or inclination to keep a large collection of partially functional cars. Also a working A/C isn't just a summer item, it is needed to keep the windows clear of condensation in the winter, especially in the rain. My first car was a '65 Corvair with no A/C - keeping all the windows free of condensation was sometimes difficult.

I wonder if any car manufacturer currently makes a vehicle where both the evaporator and the heater core are easily serviced. (Let's define that as no more than an hour of work to remove it.)

 

I love watching car wizard and all those guys have the whole car apart to replace o-rings on the fittings in the evaporator and other trim used to be GM vehicles you could get this stuff out pretty quickly that those days end of the long time ago. Now you've got the whole truck apart and four push cart sitting around the truck with parts stacked up on it for shelves high That's like 16 shelves of stuff off the vehicle just to do this in the hour and labor rate is unbelievable and you're doing this to cars that aren't even out of warranty technically speaking yet because dealers are finding technicalities to deny warranty service claims and all kinds of stuff It's rampant now never see anything like it You're warranty today basically means nothing many times