My AC died for the 3rd time this summer. Want to guess, HP hose or Compressor?

[-RAC-]

And the verdict is in.... It's the HP hose. This is #5 and #4 for this summer. Crack at the weld point again. Anyone care to guess why the weld is breaking? Heat, vibrations, poor quality parts?

The dealership put a call into Ford.

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[mindo389]

Poor quality parts would be my guess, or something happened during the packing or handling of the hoses and parts associated with them. But 5 times?

 

[galaxy]

I bet you Earl’s or some other hose manufacture could make us correct hoses that would last forever. That’s what I’ll look into if ever needed.

 

[matthewr87]

And the verdict is in.... It's the HP hose. This is #5 and #4 for this summer. Crack at the weld point again. Anyone care to guess why the weld is breaking? Heat, vibrations, poor quality parts?

The dealership put a call into Ford.

Can you post a picture of the failure point please? I want to check mine with the UV light.

 

[Emilbadal]

OP, At this stage, if I were you, I would replace everything(Condenser, dryer, evaporator, hoses, seals, compressor, expansion valves..."everything") and I wouldn't do it through dealership . From my personal experience, dealers will misdiagnose your car's issues and milk the ESP as much as they can, and will play dumb along the way, until they can't. It's almost impossible to say what exactly is going on with your car and why the hoses keep failing. In my case, I took my car in for diagnosis about 6-7 years ago at 18k miles, and their first diagnosis was that the compressor is bad, out of warranty and it's gonna cost $2700. Thanks to this forum, I was aware of the failure rates of the evap cores, so I took my car and went to another dealer, and specifically asked them to check the evaporator with borescope and sniffer test, long and behold, the evaporator was bad. I purchase all the parts genuine ford except the evap core(the brand was UAC). That same compressor that was diagnosed to be bad, still works to this day.

 

[galaxy]

Supporting what @Emilbadal said, minus one detail. Im not changing the evap unless I know for a fact it’s bad. And if it’s not bad, I’d run it to failure. The entire dash has to come out for that.

And also in line with everything he said, the job of replacing all those components is not nearly as intimidating as it sounds. My last failure, I replace everything but the evap and I think I’m all in ~$400, give or take. And don’t use a Ford compressor.

 

[-RAC-]

Can you post a picture of the failure point please? I want to check mine with the UV light.

I'll try to get a picture.

 

[Joe Mac]

I blew my AC clutch at 15,000 miles. I was told if you have the defroster on or ACon and you go above 6000 RPMs it wears out the clutch which leads to a compressor failure.
If you catch it when your the compressor clutch sounds like a coffee grinder you can fix it before it blows metal into the compressor

 

[-RAC-]

Why replace everything? What's the reason behind that?

 

[BrakeFade]

if you're seeing the same issue where the HP hose crimp is failing I would start to look at other issues. Could certainly be quality control issues on the HP hose, but with multiple failures I would at least start thinking about other potential root causes. Excessive vibration? Are your mounts ok?

 

[Emilbadal]

Why replace everything? What's the reason behind that?

Since you’ve had variety of failures multiple times(compressors and HP hoses) there’s a chance that one of the compressors, shredded its internals and pushed particles in other parts of the system, and that might be the reason that you had multiple failures. There might be some clog somewhere that raises the system pressure to a point that explodes the joints on your HP hoses(weakest part of the system). That’s just my guess And that’s why I suggested that if I were you, I’d change everything. Again, it might be something small and you do not need to change everything, however since you have been getting same failures over and over again, I’d want to start with all new parts AC system.

 

[RJ787]

It's all been covered under the ESP so far. I have 69K miles. There was no warning just got in and hot was blowing. I didn't have the super charger sound or loud noise like in the pass for the compressor.

I rarely use my A/C, I could count in both hands how many times since new. I have 11k miles vs your 70k, but I noticed the "supercharger" noise when it is running. What causes that, and does that mean it's about to crap out?

 

[galaxy]

The whine is the compressor. Mine whined for over a year, and when I finally replaced it as a preventative measure before a hot July 2,000 mile road trip, she was still working like a champ.

 

[lunatect]

I must be doing something wrong because I haven’t replaced my air-conditioning yet after eight years and 30,000 miles.

Me neither. My 2016 has 30k miles on it and has had no AC parts replaced yet for an AC that still works.

 

[RJ787]

The whine is the compressor. Mine whined for over a year, and when I finally replaced it as a preventative measure before a hot July 2,000 mile road trip, she was still working like a champ.

So is the whine "normal" or a non concern? Does your replaced compressor whine like the previous?

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