What in the world is wrong with my cars air conditioning?

Question

K here's the story. One day I noticed my air wasn't cooling very well so I took it to the shop. The people there told me that I still had lots of freon left but that they filled it all the way up anyways. They also told me that they checked for leaks and that there were none.

I noticed my air still wasn't cooling very well. Also, I would sometimes hear this odd noise just a little bit after I turned my air on, but I never could figure out where the noise was coming from. Well, today I turned on my air and heard the noise a few seconds after and then all of a sudden a bunch of white air poofed out of my air vents and it had a very weird smell, almost like a chemical. I turned my air off after that since I had no idea what was going on.

Now I have a couple of questions. First of all..it doesn't do this everytime I turn on my air, just sometimes. I live in Texas where the temps. are 90+ during the day and I really prefer to not arrive at my college classes all soaked in sweat and stinky. Do you think it will still be safe to run my air even though something is wrong? Any ideas what may have happened to my air conditioner?

Thanks for any help...I'm a 20 year old girl and don't know the slightest thing about cars!

Answer 1

Go ahead and turn it back on and run it for about 5 minutes. I suspect that you will get no cooling.  I think they may have over charged your system and as a result either an o-ring blew out or the evaporator (the part inside the dash that actually transfers the cold to the air) sprung a leak. The coolant is not toxic to people in the amount you might have breathed.  If you do get cooling, post an update and describe the noise as best you can and try to identify if it is coming from in the dash or under the hood it may be a compressor or fan issue and that information will be helpful in getting you on the right track.

Answer 2

I would say that you have a leak in your cars heater core, and you are leaking anti-freeze in the heater core box...the hot anti-freeze is  raising the temp...

if this is so..you need to have this looked at right away...

Answer 3

HI

sounds like you blew out a line or something.. It you got a puff of white stuff out of your vents you most likely don't have any Freon in it anymore. Best not try and use it if the compressor comes on and there is no Freon in it it well burn up the compressor. I don't know if I'd trust that shop anymore. Now I'm not sure but I think you can over fill them and it might have caused it to blow out..

good luck

tim

Answer 4

If it smelled bad I wouldn't use it period, we have our senses for a reason.

I'm currently working on fixing my air conditioning which has been broke as long as I've had the car. I'm suspecting my compressor's clutch doesn't engage itself all the time at the moment which if yours isn't cooling it could be part of the problem but it wouldn't make smoke come out of your vents.

Answer 5

that odd noise may mean that the compresser is bad.  I wouldn't run the air conditioning until you get the problem fixed.  Running it may cause debris from a broken part to distribute throughout the whole ac system and that would be very expensive to fix.