Car Troubles

 So this Wednesday (7/19/23) I learned something new about cars. Specifically, that the AC systems of cars include a device called an AC compressor, and that AC compressors can blow up.

Here's the story behind this lesson:

On Wednesday this week while I was driving into Price I suddenly noticed that my AC was not blowing cool air. Now I had a can of AC fluid in the trunk of my car, along with a hose to recharge a car's AC system.

So I simply pulled over into a parking lot in town and began the process of recharging my AC. Now when I initially plugged in the AC hose to get a reading on the AC pressure in my car I got a reading of 0 Psi (which in hindsight should have been a red flag of a bigger issue). However, before driving out to Utah Dad and I made sure that my car's AC was topped off, but we kept running into issues with getting an accurate pressure reading with the hose we were using (the same hose that I used on Wednesday). So I figured that the hose itself must be broken. I then drove to Walmart to buy a new AC hose, along with a new can of AC fluid since the one I currently had was empty. 

With my new equipment I began the process of recharging my car's AC again, but still I was getting an initial pressure reading of 0. Not only that, but when I tried injecting AC fluid into my car anyway the pressure reading didn't change at all, nor did my car start blowing cool air. I Googled the process of recharging a TSX Acura's AC system to see if I was doing anything wrong, but as far as I could tell I was doing everything correctly.

I finally decided to bring my car to a mechanic in town and let the professionals recharge my AC since I clearly didn't know what I was doing. I thought it would only take about an hour. However, when they checked out my car one of the mechanics told me straight up that my AC compressor had blown up. And when I say blown up, I mean that they showed me a metal box like device under my car's hood that they were pulling sold pieces of broken metal from. They even let me keep a couple as a souvenir.

They then told me that not only would they need to replace the compressor, but they also needed to flush out my AC system to remove any smaller pieces that might have gotten in and would likely cause even more damage given enough time. They then said the entire job would take up most of the day, and it was late afternoon at that point already (I repeat, I initially thought my AC would be blowing cold air again in an hour or less). Thankfully my roommate was also in town and was just getting off of work at the time, so I gave me a ride back to our apartment.

The next day I decided to ride with Jared my roommate into town and go into work with him at the BLM, even though Thursdays are usually my days off. This was because I saw no reason to stay at the apartment and call Jared to make a twenty minute drive from the office where we work at to our apartment to pick me up, only to then make that same twenty minute drive to the car shop when the car shop and the office our five minutes away.

In total, the whole incident cost me the majority of my day off, and $2,000. So, not a particularly great couple of days. But at least my car's AC is working great now. Which is especially important when your car's interior is black and you're living in Utah in the middle of July.

And before you ask, no, I have no idea how my car's AC compressor got broken in the first place. My two best guesses is that it either happened the first time I tried recharging my car's AC on Wednesday. Or the compressor was damaged sometime earlier, but didn't quiet give out until that day for some reason.