Hello everyone, I am newbie. I've just bought a second hand Fiat500 1.2 Lounge 2009. It's now 52K km. I found that the noise of AC compressor is too loud when ON. It's not the noise from AC Fan. Could someone please share me the experience? Is it normal with Fiat500? or AC compressor and other things are getting failures? Thanks. Richard Loc.
Technical Air con noise in Fiat 500 1.2
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Technical Air con noise in Fiat 500 1.2
Excessive A/C compressor noise is not normal on the 500.
The system is probably just low on refrigerant and likely needs regassing. Every three years or so, the system should be vacuumed out, leak tested, and then the correct quantity of refrigerant & lubricant added.
Certainly that's the first thing to try.
Get an aircon specialist to do the work not a run of the mill garage on a street corner.
Some people will not use the aircon at all and this causes things to seize up and dry out as no oil gets around the system. This means when a new owner starts using it, the compressor can ware quickly and you want someone who knows what they are doing and can identify if there are any problems with the compressor such as worn bearings or a slipping clutch.
Some people will not use the aircon at all and this causes things to seize up and dry out as no oil gets around the system. This means when a new owner starts using it, the compressor can ware quickly and you want someone who knows what they are doing and can identify if there are any problems with the compressor such as worn bearings or a slipping clutch.
Does it make a whine type noise when compressing? If so it's likely to have too much refrigerant than too little as said before go to a proper ac service place, that said I've used Kwik fit many times and has been no problem and they give you a print out of what was in and what has been replaced.
The sight glass seems to be missing on lots of modern cars, pity as it clearly shows low refrigerant even to a novice as long as they know what to look for all Honda's used to have one .
Neither of my present cars, a 2008 Saab 9-3 or our 8 month old Hyundai i10 which have climate control and standard A/C respectively, have a refrigerant sight glass and I've never owned a vehicle that ever has, even a 1992 Volvo 440 I used to own back in the 90's......
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I must have a 1972 Prius
The A/C system in the Prius is highly non-standard & uses an electric compressor supplied by a 3 phase 206V inverter controlled by a very sophisticated ECU that can cope with significant variations in supply voltage. Special high dielectric oils are needed to cope with the voltages present - I dread to think what either a compressor replacement or regas would cost. Providing a better than industry standard method of checking refigerant levels would seem appropriate in this case.
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I must have a 1972 Prius
In addition to jrkitching said.
This isn't a Prius forum so the finer points of the Prius aircon system isn't really going to help someone asking about their fiat 500. You own a fiat 500 so I'd have thought you'd know that they don't have a sight glass for checking the aircon.
A sight glass does t really tell you anything, the system can still be low on refrigerant even without any bubbles being visible in the window, in fact the system can be completely empty and won't show any problems on a sight glass, but a seized pressure sensor can mean everything seems to be working normally. And this is why most aircon systems automotive and otherwise, don't have a sight glass these days
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Japanese cars across the board have had sight glasses into at least the 2000's, it's not Prius specific. Of my current cars three have sight glass's (on reflection, all Japanese), the Euros and American don't.
