ACtion Magazine - NAPA - Spring 2016 - (Page 11)

By Paul Weissler, MACS Senior Technical Correspondent " It's a bad compressor." How often have you or any of the technicians in your shop said that to a customer? The compressor is generally regarded as a single component, certainly in recent years when most shops have given up on replacement of leaking shaft seals. Even clutch replacement, once a common service job, seems to have become obsolete. "It's cheaper to put on a new pump" is a very common attitude, and one of the lower-cost alternatives are aftermarket generic new compressors available in a variety of mounting configurations to fit popular OE applications. When the only alternative was a reman, a lot of shops would hesitate, because they didn't trust the ones their parts jobber was sourcing, or more simply, they had a few bad experiences. That's all it takes when the compressor is buried and you also have to go through recovery, recycle and recharge. Why take a chance? The situation has reached the point where parts availability has made some of the decisions. The remans are technically still available, but many shops pick them only when there's no choice. That is, you can't get a new compressor for the application. Piston compressors remain generally available as remans, but scrolls are somewhat tougher, although there are some remanufacturers. The OE compressor suppliers tell us they don't remanufacture scrolls, but there are aftermarket-only companies that do. We can't tell you exactly what they do, nor what their standards are for remanufacturable cores, but we suspect they're pretty high; perhaps limited to seals, rpm sensor, thermal switch, relief valve, or failures other than ones that affected the internal interleafed scrolls. We'd also caution that just because a compressor is new doesn't mean its quality is better than a quality reman. The rule: know your supplier (and check the warranty, including who's behind it). In the past year, we've noted some cases where the compressor clutch can be replaced on the car (actually that Spring 2016 * ACTION/NAPA 11

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of ACtion Magazine - NAPA - Spring 2016

ACtion Magazine - NAPA - Spring 2016
Watching yf
A/C Diagnostics and Troubleshooting
Staying visible in times of change
The compressor is not just a component
Restricted air flow
Externally Controlled variable displacement
A new Jeep
Increasing Facebook interactions
Mission possible
R-1234yf and other trends

ACtion Magazine - NAPA - Spring 2016