General How effective is Stilo air-con?

[tomfoster]

As above! I've had my Stilo just over a year and when the air-con is on it's pretty much not noticeable. Should it be any good or not? It would be nice to be able to use the air-con to demist the windscreen on these cold morning and I'm thinking about getting it regassed/serviced.

The reason I ask is that my mother has a nearly new Yaris and the air-con in that is also pants. Is it just that air-con isn't very effective in smaller-engined cars? When I turn it on in my Scoob it demists the car in a minute or so.

 

[Chris017]

well i have a jtd 115 and i have never touched my air-con or had it re filled or anything and it is bloody brilliant.

have to say though, i have never used it to de mist the windows. tried it once but wasnt sure if it should be on the hot air or cold air so i just use it in the summer with the windows closed and it gets really chilly

 

[jim cooper]

Mine is fine for cooling the interior in hot weather and it will demist pretty quickly when set to hot and the air control button set to interior circulation.

 

[TangerineTractor]

Are we talking manual aircon or climate control?
With climate control, there's a button that basically blasts everything up to the windscreen overriding everything else.
My JTD has CC, it's certainly "different" from my previous cars (VWs and BMWs) - I get nothing at all until its got sufficient heat in the system before it will kick in, usually after 5 mins or so of running, thn it's pretty vigorous until it hits the desired temp, then cuts right down. On cold days in auto mode, the fan is on a pretty high setting constantly.
Have to say though, this is only after fixing the air flow distributor box - it wasn;t putting air to the footwells, which is the default setting to warm the car, so whatever I set the aircon temperature to, the fan was blowing full belt and the warm air was going nowhere.
At the moment, I tend to leave mine on 22c, and the ditribution to the windscreen and footwells, with the cooler off - this keeps a flow of warmish air to the windscreen and prevents it misting, without blasting you in the face with it.

 

[Bolty]

Mine is very noisy on full blast but pretty ineffective in hot weather to be honest. Replace pollen filters though, this helped for me.

 

[TangerineTractor]

Ditched the pollen filter completely. In cold weather, it stopped the air from pulling through the heater matrix, deflecting some of it out into the car, making the footwells freezing cold.

 

[tomfoster]

Ditched the pollen filter completely. In cold weather, it stopped the air from pulling through the heater matrix, deflecting some of it out into the car, making the footwells freezing cold.

That's interesting - I find the same thing happens with mine. My car is just the manual 'air con' model, not climate-controlled. Do the air con cars have pollen filters? If so, I'll try removing it.

 

[cris1117]

Pollen filter is the usual culprit, I personally do not replace it when they start to play up, i just run without it.

 

[Most Easterly Pandas]

AC is more than effective, although ideally shouldn't be used when external air temp is below 3-4C!

I'd take the Yaris back if the AC isn't effective on that, although again, if the external air temp is low it may auto disengage!

 

[The Free(welsh)man]

I had CC on mine but it wasn't great. It just took ages to clear the screen compared to the simpler manual air con unit. I was actually thinking of converting it to the old fashioned unit when it happened. The CC unit is far too fiddly. I had to really think about what commands to give it in order to make it do what I wanted.
Maybe I'm just an old fashioned young git?