Condenser fins

Last weekend the A/C condenser was cleaned by spraying foaming A/C condenser cleaner (the blue can from Home Depot) in through the slots and also down from the top. Then rinse with a garden hose. Then because our tap water is very vary hard, rinsed again with distilled water from a Greenwood garden sprayer. That is a hand pumped sprayer, no force to speak of, more like a mist than serious spray. Some parts still looked dirty so they were washed again the same way.

When done the top part looked very good (see picture at bottom), the middle looked pretty good, mostly straight but some bent fins visible through the grill. But the bottom 4 or 5 inches, yuck. I couldn't get a decent picture through the grill opening with a camera, so this example was made with a Teslong bore scope camera (there is a little motion blur):



The fins are like that pretty much the entire way across. The bottom shields are intact. I have never used a pressure washer on this car. Gravel damage maybe?

Anyway...

The A/C still works pretty well, but I bet it would work better if it could breathe along the bottom. When the daytime temperature here gets below 90 guess I'll take off the bumper cover and waste 4 or 5 hours straightening that mess out.

 

The round toothpicks worked fine, although they would eventually break the tip and have to be replaced. Straightened out most of the bent fins this way, and didn't need to use any other tools. There were a couple of sections that were not only mashed flat, but also shoved in, like they were hit by a small but pretty substantial rock. One even bent the horizontal tube below it slightly. Tried to fix a couple of these regions and gave up, because the fin metal always tore.

Two odd things:

1. There were a couple of hundred little tiny rocks wedged between the fins. Each time it was a perfect fit, with the fins not being spread out. It was as if a rock that was a little bit too big would hit the fin edge, bend it, and bounce off, and the ones that were too small went right through, but the ones that were in this very narrow size range stuck. The fins form a series of "V" shaped spaces. The smallest rocks were stuck in the narrow end, where the fins were closest together, and the biggest rocks were stuck in the wider end, where they were farthest apart.

2. Cleaned the condenser afterwards with the blue can from Home Depot. Rinsed off the remaining cleaner afterwards gently with a garden hose. Tap water doesn't drain out of the condenser, it acts like a big flat metal sponge! The surface tension is apparently high enough so that the water is perfectly happy sitting in those roughly triangular cross section tunnels for a very long time. Finally removed most of it with a thick cotton sock from the rag bag, by gently blotting out the water. An amazing amount of water would wick out each time. After the bumper cover was back on drove the car at 40 mph for a few minutes, and that was hopefully enough to blow the remaining water out. I didn't notice the water staying in there when it was cleaned through the bumper cover because the light (and my eyesight) were not up to the task. In that case though I drove it the same way immediately, since the bumper cover was already on.

 

Yikes!

Did that condenser still work with all of that damage?

My first picture has part of the same clamp in it as your last picture. On mine the screw has some surface rust, and there are a few specks of rust here and there on the bracket. The clamp on yours looks like it was ready to disintegrate into a small pile of rusty bits the next time the car hit a sharp bump.