Yarek
Member
The previous owner did admit that the AC is intermittent, and that was my experience when I took the truck home the evening I bought it. It wasn't all that warm, but I did run it a bit. It worked, then it stopped cooling for a while (the fan stayed on), and then kicked in again. PO was mostly driving locally (home depot, dump etc.).
Anyways, yesterday I drove it 140 miles each way to pick up a camper shell on Craigslist. It was pretty toasty, probably 85-90F, and the AC worked OK for the first 15-20min, maybe cut out for a little bit in the middle, but when it cut out the second time, it never came back on, until a few hours later on the way back.
Two suspects I can think of: condenser isn't getting enough cooling, or there isn't enough refrigerant in the system. The truck was made in June 2000, so...
Any thoughts? I can replace a fan, but I don't have the tools to recharge the refrigerant (vacuum pump etc.) so I'm wondering if you have any suggestions on how to diagnose it.
As a side note: I was expecting the truck to burn a lot more gas than it did, thinking I'd get 8-10mpg. Granted, I was easy on the throttle, and whenever the traffic was flowing, I was doing around 73mph on average, and it looks like I got about 12-13 mpg out of that V10. Does that seem about right from your experience?
Anyways, yesterday I drove it 140 miles each way to pick up a camper shell on Craigslist. It was pretty toasty, probably 85-90F, and the AC worked OK for the first 15-20min, maybe cut out for a little bit in the middle, but when it cut out the second time, it never came back on, until a few hours later on the way back.
Two suspects I can think of: condenser isn't getting enough cooling, or there isn't enough refrigerant in the system. The truck was made in June 2000, so...
Any thoughts? I can replace a fan, but I don't have the tools to recharge the refrigerant (vacuum pump etc.) so I'm wondering if you have any suggestions on how to diagnose it.
As a side note: I was expecting the truck to burn a lot more gas than it did, thinking I'd get 8-10mpg. Granted, I was easy on the throttle, and whenever the traffic was flowing, I was doing around 73mph on average, and it looks like I got about 12-13 mpg out of that V10. Does that seem about right from your experience?
