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Speaker 1 (00:01):

Welcome to our podcast. All about the car brought to you by Cheryl tire and service. I'm your host, Rob Hoffman and auto service specialists with over 44 years of industry experience with me in the studio today, our regular guests, Brian call a 38 year veteran in the automotive industry. Hey Rob, thank you so much for having me ride along today. And bill Sheryl, a guy who's been driving a long time and it has a lot of great questions. Hi, Rob, glad to be part

Speaker 2 (00:27):

Of the drive today.

Speaker 3 (00:34):

[inaudible]

Speaker 1 (00:35):

Today, we're here talking about your cars, air conditioner, you know, air conditioning has quite a history behind it. During my research here, I, I looked up some fun facts and there are quite a bit out there to, uh, kind of give you something to think about the first car to have factory installed. Air conditioning was in 1940 and that was the 1940 Packard. So they were thinking about this way back then. And that was an actual air conditioning system in that car. Prior to that, they had some crazy ideas utilizing ice and things like that, but this was an actual air conditioning system that was installed by Packard. And by 1969, more than half of the car sold were equipped with air conditioning. So we were still sweating it out back then on half the cars. And today more than 99% of all new cars are air conditioned.

Speaker 1 (01:25):

So you wonder in today's cars. How does that actually work? Well, that's a really good question. There's a lot to this. The first question you might have when you start up your air conditioning in the spring, is, is it working? How do you know it's working or not? And there's some indicators that can lead you to the idea as to whether your air conditioning survive the winter months or not. Another indicator on whether it's working correctly will be possibly a smell coming out of your vents that you don't remember before. Something that doesn't seem normal. You might hear some unusual banging or rattling sounds under the hood. And when you first hit that button in the spring, that would be a pretty good indicator. You might want to shut it back off and have it looked at professionally and you might see some puddles or stains on your carpet inside the vehicle. So you're trying to figure out how to relate all these different scenarios in, and we're going to get into it just a little bit here in regards to how it works and where it's located in your car. I just like

Speaker 2 (02:23):

To think about Jesse, keep me cool.

Speaker 1 (02:27):

And that is a good question. That's that actually comes back to, is it not as cold as it used to be? So if you can wind your memory back to the previous season when you had your air conditioning running and you were comfortable, didn't have to think about it. And now you're just not there. And heck it's, it's still only spring. So we were, haven't gotten real hot yet. So at this point, I think we can get into how does the system work. And we do also have a really good link out there, a blog on our website that will explain it in depth. We're going to get into some conversation right here, right now in regards to how your automotive air conditioning works. I know there's a lot of pieces and parts to the air conditioning and the parts are located all the way from the front of your car. In some cases, all the way to the back, just for that air conditioning to work. Brian, what are some of the parts? The main parts of an air conditioning

Speaker 2 (03:18):

Main parts would be the evaporator, condenser, compressor, air conditioning mines, and the refrigerant that goes in the air conditioner. The generic term for that would be free.

Speaker 1 (03:32):

Well, you got my head swimming already and I've heard, uh, conversations in regards to high and low side gauges valves. This is way too much for most people to grasp.

Speaker 2 (03:44):

It takes specialized equipment to really diagnose and troubleshoot what's going on with the air conditioning system.

Speaker 4 (03:51):

But how does it actually work? Walk us through this because some people will be able to understand it for sure.

Speaker 2 (03:57):

Sure. Okay. The air conditioning system on a car is like a big dehumidifier that you'd have in your house. It evaporates the humidity out of the air and that drains under the car flipped Rob was talking about earlier. And then it absorbs the heat from inside the car and moves it to the front of the car where it gives off the heat. That's why the condensers outside the car and the air flow over helps the air conditioning system dissipate the heat.

Speaker 4 (04:28):

So is that air that I'm feeling that I'm saying, oh, that's cool. Air

Speaker 2 (04:34):

Dryer. It's both cool and dryer. So what happens is the heat is absorbed inside the evaporator core and channeled outside of the car. Along with that, it's dehumidifying the air so that it does feel cooler and drier.

Speaker 4 (04:50):

You happen to know like what the temperature drop is between hot air and how fast that that evaporation can take place.

Speaker 2 (04:58):

There's approximately a 30 degree air temperature difference. So as the car is cooling down, that temperature that's coming out of the vents is going to be colder. As the ambient temperature goes down.

Speaker 1 (05:12):

Is there actually a standard for what temperature correctly operating air conditioning unit would be in?

Speaker 2 (05:18):

Yeah, there's quite a few variables with that, depending on how humid it is outside, how warm it is outside a typical air conditioner can take the interior of a car down to about 40 degrees. There's a few times you can get down into about 36, 38 degrees, if it's any colder than that, the system actually freezes up and stops.

Speaker 1 (05:38):

That sounds cold enough to me, me too. I think I've seen my breath before. So I've also heard the talk about rear AC and some larger vehicles. I would assume like a large SUV. They have them in the rear. Is that a whole separate system?

Speaker 2 (05:55):

It's actually the same system. There's just additional components that go to the rear of the air conditioning. It's always

Speaker 4 (06:02):

Nice to have that for your guests riding in the back seat

Speaker 2 (06:05):

Or the children, some of these SUV's and vans are pretty darn big. And there's a lot of air that you got to move to keep that interior cool.

Speaker 1 (06:14):

That rear AC is actually working off of the main unit in the front.

Speaker 2 (06:19):

It's the same system.

Speaker 1 (06:22):

One of our family vehicles has cooled seats, cooled and heated. I can understand heated. We've had those around for a while, but cooled seats. How the heck does that work?

Speaker 2 (06:32):

There's a couple of different systems. One is utilizing a fan that blows up through a porous foam. That's in the seat that dissipates the heat from your body. The second actually uses the air conditioning system and funnels the cool air up into the seat and brings the temperature down quicker.

Speaker 4 (06:53):

So that poorest seed actually allows your body to stay cooler versus the air necessarily

Speaker 2 (07:00):

Cooling. Yep. When you're sitting on your seat, it's like a big blanket, right on the bottom side, instead of on the top side. So blowing that air through there helps dissipate your body away from the blanket. Very efficient. I would assume they are really nice. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (07:16):

I have not experienced one of those yet.

Speaker 1 (07:20):

Now earlier I mentioned, uh, I talked about the different indicators that your air conditioning might not be working correctly. And one of them was a smell or different smells that you get out of the vents. I noticed a couple of years ago in a vehicle, we had that, uh, w when I first turned it on in the spring time, we had kind of a must be or a moldy. I hate to say it smell coming out of events, but the air conditioner seemed to be working. In other words, it got cold enough, but the smell was just terrible. Typically every time when I started up for the first time what's going on,

Speaker 2 (07:50):

That's actually a mold that's growing down inside your dash. As I said before, the air conditioner is a big dehumidifier, just like you have in your home. And it's pulling that moisture in. And that moisture is sitting down inside your dash, not all of that evaporates, or it goes out to the ground. And over the course of time, a mold will grow in there. It's actually a relatively easy process to get rid of that smell. One of the things is check your cabin, air filter that could have some mold growing on it. And that's real simple to change out. There's also some chemicals that you can spray down inside the dash vents to help kill off the mold down inside your dash.

Speaker 1 (08:33):

So let's just assume at this point, we've got it all figured out. The air conditioning seems to be working. I got to believe there's a right or wrong way to operating your air conditioning. You've all done it. You opened the door in a parking lot, get in your car and it's hotter than heck in there. It seems like even a working air conditioner takes a while to feel comfortable. I mean, you're, you know, let's say I don't have the cooled seats, so I don't have that going for me. What's the best way. The quickest way, most efficient way, I guess, of cooling down your interior.

Speaker 2 (09:05):

Well, think about how hot the interior is with your car. Sitting out in a parking lot. It's not uncommon to have 130, 140 degree interior air temperature. So it does take a while to cool it down. One of the quickest ways to help it along is roll your windows down a little bit and turn your air conditioner on Macs are the highest setting that you can get. And we just got to displace that air out of there as quickly as we can.

Speaker 1 (09:31):

So the windows down, let some of that stuff, all that hot air go out as you're grabbing it.

Speaker 2 (09:36):

Yeah. After a couple minutes, roll your windows back up and then switch it over to re-circulate. If you have that feature available on your car,

Speaker 1 (09:45):

I've heard different things in regards to research relate that that button I've heard, it's a max air,

Speaker 2 (09:50):

But that's one terminology that some car manufacturers use. Same

Speaker 1 (09:54):

Thing. Yes. Okay.

Speaker 4 (09:56):

Why is that internal error recirculation better? It's

Speaker 2 (10:01):

Taking cool air and cooling it off multiple times versus bringing hot summer air into the vehicle where it has to cool it down even further. So

Speaker 1 (10:11):

Kind of recycling. Yeah,

Speaker 4 (10:13):

It makes sense. Like I got now 20 degrees off the first time that I can get another 20 off this and you get really cool air very quick. That makes sense to me.

Speaker 1 (10:22):

Great tip. Great tips for sure. The other thing that I've experienced in my past too, is some of the events seem to blow colder than others. Not so much blow more or less, but some are colder white. Why would that be? Is that something wrong with my car

Speaker 2 (10:39):

In most cases? No. In some cases, yes. As the air goes down through the vents, that's up inside the dash, the dash is going to be hot and that's going to be one of the last places to cool down because it doesn't actually have air flowing over it. So it's going to take significantly longer to cool off. There are several cars out there with dual climate control. So the passenger and the driver can have different air temperatures, and there are components, actuators, and so on inside the dash that may not be functioning properly.

Speaker 4 (11:11):

And there's also the speed of the airflow. Is that help cool off those things? Like, you know, like maybe the fan is broke, that it's just not pumping enough air through that particular one.

Speaker 2 (11:23):

There are different settings on the fan and yeah, it's not uncommon to have the high setting, not working correctly, not blowing across and you may have to move it down one notch to get the airflow. So in that case, there is a definite part failure,

Speaker 1 (11:41):

You know, back when fuel prices were a lot higher, there was always the conversation. How do you get your best fuel mileage? Is it better to just roll the windows down and go down the road and keep the AC off or you better to keep the windows up in the air conditioning on. Now? I always, always under the assumption that if you're running an air conditioning unit, your engine has to power that in some way. So it's going to require more fuel again. You can kind of see the age old conversation here. Do you have any thoughts on that?

Speaker 2 (12:11):

In most cases to get your best bill economy, you would drive with the windows up in the air conditioner off, but that's not real comfortable. So

Speaker 1 (12:20):

I would want to be in that car,

Speaker 2 (12:21):

Driving with the windows down, actually it reduces the fuel economy more than having the air conditioner on with the windows.

Speaker 1 (12:29):

Actually, we have a really good link that you can go to, uh, the check that out in here and see it read through that same conversation. It's really interesting. So make sure you check that out on our website. So next I wanted to get into servicing the system. So let's just say that things are all rosy and cool, but, uh, we found that there's some problems. We've heard those clumps and rattles under the hood. It's not as cool as it used to be. And the family starting to whine and complain a little bit on the trip. How do I have my air conditioning check? Can somebody just opened the hood and say, yep, you're good. Or, Nope, you're not

Speaker 2 (13:06):

Best indication is the actual air temperature coming out of the vents. Uh, you can go out and buy an inexpensive thermometer and put it in the vents. And if your air temperature coming out is around 40 degrees, you're actually functioning quite well. If it's beyond that, then you actually have to hook up gauges and measure the pressure on both. What's called the high side and the low side of the air conditioning system. And to properly do that, you have to have the equipment.

Speaker 1 (13:34):

Is this something I can service myself? Can I check it myself? Or is this not the way to do it?

Speaker 2 (13:39):

There are kits that you can buy to hook up, but more often than not the improper charge of refrigerant going into it will cause the air conditioner to not function correctly.

Speaker 1 (13:52):

It sounds like that wouldn't be good for your system. Is that, am I on the right track?

Speaker 2 (13:56):

There's fail safes in the system that if the pressure's too high or too low, it will shut itself off. So the danger of actually ruining a component is relatively low, but when people typically go by those kids to do it themselves, they lose a lot of the refrigerant into the atmosphere or overcharge or undercharge, and then the system doesn't work correctly.

Speaker 1 (14:18):

So what I take away from that is that you were just better off leaving it to the professionals that have the equipment and have the know-how that's the best way to do it. And what typically is done during that service,

Speaker 2 (14:30):

What we do is we actually remove all of the refrigerant out of the air conditioning system and measure how much was in there. It's down into ounces, fractions of ounces for the correct charge. And you have to know what's in there. And then we remove any air moisture that would be in the system. And then we recharge it with the correct amount to make sure the system is operating correctly. And what

Speaker 4 (14:54):

Kind of refrigerant are you talking about putting in? Cause isn't there a whole connection between the refrigerant and the depletion of the ozone?

Speaker 2 (15:02):

Oh, that's a very interesting conversation. Our 12, which was the refrigerant that was designed in the 1930s was used all the way up to in most vehicles about 1994, the R 12 is an ozone depleting gas. So as it leaked out of the car, it depleted the ozone layer, which protects us from the UV rays of the sun. So in 1995, it started to become pretty mainstream to use. What's called our 1 34 a that is not an ozone depleting gas, but it is a greenhouse gas. So it's better for the environment, but not great for the environment.

Speaker 4 (15:44):

Still heats up the earth now with greenhouse gases because the radiant res necessarily rebound in the state connected or stay below the atmosphere.

Speaker 2 (15:54):

Yep. It bounces back in and acts as a protective layer with the heat remaining within the atmosphere. So recently there was a new refrigerant called our 1, 2, 3, 4 Y F that came out. And one of the things is that uses so much less material and it's much better for the atmosphere. It is still a greenhouse gas type refrigerant, but the danger to the earth is significantly less. That are 1, 2, 3, 4, Y F will actually make itself go away in about 13 days. If it's released into the atmosphere to put things in perspective, there's a terminology called global warming potential R 12 as a global warming potential of 10,900 are 1, 2, 3, 4 has a potential of 1,430. The safe standard is 150 with the newer refrigerant are 1, 2, 3, 4 Y F. It has a global warming potential of four. So it's significantly safer for the atmosphere.

Speaker 4 (17:02):

That's amazing. And if I'm having my service done somewhere, I could ask our request, what type of refrigerant is someone putting in my vehicle at? What are they using?

Speaker 2 (17:11):

Unfortunately, that can happen. It's vehicle specific and they're not interchangeable. So as the newer cars come out, it's been used for about the last five, six years, pretty consistently. And it's that, or a couple of others that are coming on the market now that'll be used in the future.

Speaker 4 (17:30):

Well, if I'm really concerned about this, something that I might want to look at for a new purchase of a vehicle is what type of refrigerant is in the vehicle.

Speaker 2 (17:38):

It's standard. Now that they are 1, 2, 3, 4 YF or Europe is using a different one R 7 4 4, which Europe is using the United States is using the other one. Got it.

Speaker 1 (17:50):

Oh my gosh. That's a lot of information. I am so happy. I don't need you to go to my service center with any information when I bring my car. So they're just going to automatically know that my car takes a certain type. Yep, absolutely. Very, very good to know. The other question I had in regards to service is, um, I did some research on this because I was curious as to how often I should have my air conditioning checked by a professional. And, uh, the answer that I got was every two years or every other year, as it was stated, Brian, why would I have a check when it's still working?

Speaker 2 (18:26):

The air conditioner is going to lose a small amount of the refrigerant over the course of time. It's impossible to seal it a hundred percent. So if it's little bit low, it's not going to be operating as efficiently as it should, which is going to put more strain on the air conditioning system to try and keep you comfortable.

Speaker 1 (18:44):

And in my research, I also found that one of the things that they do when they check your air conditioner is remove moisture. So I would assume it's like a half bottle of water that sits around. It just collects moisture inside. Is that how it gets moisture in there?

Speaker 2 (18:58):

The refrigerant leaking out a small amount of moisture does seep into the system. And when we service it, we actually put the air conditioning system under a vacuum, which allows the water to actually boil out at a very low temperature.

Speaker 1 (19:15):

Okay. It seems like there's a lot to these air conditioning systems. And, uh, you know, I tell you what I think it's best to leave it to your service professional, like anything else in your car, it's going to require some maintenance. And we've talked about maintenance before in our vehicles. So this is just another part of the car that is important to us as we use it on a daily basis. I've also heard that your car uses its air conditioning system in the winter time when you have the defrost on

Speaker 2 (19:45):

It does what's happening is it's blowing over the evaporator core to remove the humidity or the moisture out of the air. So you're not blowing moisture up on the windshield, causing it to freeze up on the inside.

Speaker 1 (19:59):

Interesting. So we, we rely on our air conditioning a lot more than we ever thought we did. And there's a lot more to this, that that system really works darn hard for us, for sure. And you know, the age old question is how do you solve the desired temperature between the driver and the passenger, you know, back in the old days and the old cars, it was always that battle. It's too hot. It's too cold. Uh, those days gone,

Speaker 2 (20:24):

It's minimized some with dual climate control or do air systems for the passenger and the driver's side. But if you're riding along in my car, it's really cold because my wife wants it that way. And it's a little too cold.

Speaker 1 (20:39):

That sounds really familiar to me too. Well, I think that pretty much wraps up our air conditioning conversation. You, we went through a lot of things today. We went through a lot of items in regards to, uh, the history and fun facts. We have a link out there that you can check that and get more facts. And you can be the pride of your conversations with that. Also, we talked about using your air conditioning for the first time in spring and the different things to notice and to determine whether you need service or not, and also how to get the most out of your air conditioning and your fuel mileage, and also how, and when to service your air conditioning system.

Speaker 3 (21:24):

[inaudible]

Speaker 1 (21:24):

So right along with us next time, when we talk about TPMS to listen to previous episodes, find additional resources or send us a message to do all about the car podcast.com. See you next time.

Speaker 3 (21:44):

[inaudible].