A/C Compressor Problem

Whoa! That's a lot of money. Hope they get it working without any further expenses.
Good luck!

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.

 

This is sh*t!

 

sorry, missed that one. there are others here who have had similar problem. it's one of the things i try to warn prospective purchasers about. there are several systems on this car that are way more expensive than a gasser. even though they might be rare failures, it's no fun if it's you.

we even had a member with a 2012 pip with 68,000 miles who traded it in on a rav4, because the a/c went out just past warranty, and they wanted $2,500. to fix it.

 

It's astounding that the interior has to be gutted like this:



Ease of maintenance (and cost!) is very evidently not a priority for Toyota.

 

ya, not very well thought out.

 

Not that uncommon to have to pull the dash to replace the air conditioning evaporator. I’ve never had to pull the dash from Prius but it looks simpler than the cars that I had to do it on so 1600 dollars sounds a lot for the work.

 

I've had evaporators replaced on a Volvo and a Dodge. The dash needed to come apart on both of them. In each case it took about 8 hours of labor to replace, so I'm not surprised at the amount of work involved in replacing the evaporator. I'd be more concerned about why the dealer is replacing the evaporator when they don't know where the leak is.

 

I guess what bothers me is what a cacophony. I'm sure it could be more modularized. The manufacturers don't take the initiative, everything practically disposable.

 

Why would the modularizing it even further be the answer to maintaining? Car parts are already sold as big assemblies so when something breaks you have to buy expensive assembly instead of just the failed part.

 

Wrong words maybe. Just look at the pic maybe. Gotta be possible to improve on that, looks like brain surgery in progress.

 

It doesn’t really look that bad. You do get used to this sort of work. I do have exactly same looking pictures from some Audis.

Maybe Toyota could use some master plugs with separate wiring harness for dash but that would add extra connectors and depending on how they’re done it might not simplify the proses that much.

 

I wouldn’t say that this kind of work is that hard for DIY. All you need is organization and take pictures.

If you live somewhere where they use a lot of road salt then all suspension and undercarriage work has high likelihood of surprises that multiply the work time and require special tools especially if you don’t have acetylene torch. With interior work you don’t even (probably) going to have rusty bolts to deal with.

 

Yikes! What a job. I know they have to take apart a lot for the evaporator, but that looks like a whole lot. The evaporator and compressor both developed leaks on my wife's '05. That was a little over $1,600 at a friend's shop. They got it all put back together and working, but did manage to misassemble one piece of plastic that was an easy fix. About three months later, a texter totaled the car while we were waiting at a red light.

 

The 2005 has 250K miles according to the OP's signature, so perhaps it would have been better to drop off the car at a salvage yard with the title and walk away... The market value of the car approaches the repair price cited by the OP.

The dealer repair price seems reasonable considering the installation of new parts and the labor cost associated with removing the dashboard and the entire AC system for cleaning... Which dealer is doing the service?

The OP asked where the oil went. Probably through a leak at the evaporator. Was the AC system performance marginal prior to this catastrophic failure? Was the refrigerant replaced previously?

 

Frustrating to see a peripheral system taking a car off the road, but there it is. Maybe would have been best to just drive it without AC.

Could the initial problem be that the system was recharged at some point, without oil??

 

proper recharging of a/c requires adding some oil w/ dye in it, so that when the system gets weak again its easy to see where the leak is. I know some techs are careless and don't always do it.
evaporator replacement is almost always a huge expensive job. a '90's Benz S class its about 40 hours labor at more than $100/hr. and even for 40 hours, I still dread having to do it.