My car air conditioner has been blowing warmish air for a while. I remember when I had a different car with AC problems, the repair shops kept trying to get me to run diagnostics and other costly tests so I was hesitant about trying to get freon without all the upselling.
This month I also had to renew my car tags. First, you have to get an inspection. Not a big deal except I have a short in the backlight on the driver's side. The light will stay on constantly and run my battery down, so I have unplugged it. However, there is a small light under it that does flash so I'm not completely without a turn signal.
I'm not sure why I went to the inspection knowing this, but I lucked out and the guy only looked at the front lights. (Good Luck #1)
I ask the inspection man if they do freon and he said no but go over here to Joe Blow. I was out a couple of days later and decided to run by Joe Blow and see what the cost would be. And, I was totally ready to turn down any extra offers to check my system.
Joe Blow looks at it and says you are only a little bit low and that adding freon probably wouldn't make much of a difference - but it did. Hallelujah. (Good Luck #2) Then he did come back and told me the passenger side fan in my radiator wasn't working. I didn't even know it had to fans. And how did he even know that? (Grumble, Mumble)
In order to tell me what it would cost to fix the fan, he would have to run a diagnostic. (So they still got me.) I thought a little bit and I said to go ahead. I knew I didn't want to burn up my radiator.
The test comes back and there is a short is some harness and it's tricky to diagnose. He said they would be glad to try and fix it but honestly, it was one of those try this and then try that and could really add up.
So my 2006 Honda Civic with less than 85,000 miles needs a repair that isn't easy to fix. The car is at the age that you wouldn't normally put a whole lot of money into it but with that mileage, I'm expecting another 100,000 miles out of it. I was fully expecting it to outlive me.
Have no fear, though. There are sites on the internet where people post questions and comments about a certain age/make/model of car. I'm sure mine is not the only one to have had this problem. So stay tuned for my internet diagnosis. Just pray I don't try to fix it myself.
More later ....
Cars, hard to live without but costly! Hope you find out helpful info.
ReplyDeleteThat doesn't seem like high mileage for a 2006. Have you tried turning the radio up? That's the extent of my mechanical ability. I guess I should have used quotation marks there.
ReplyDeleteHang in there. My car is three years older than yours and really has 180,000 miles on it. Still going strong. Hopefully yours is a simple fix and you get that extra 100 thousand out of it.
ReplyDeleteIt's always scary when you need some repairs. Who do we trust? Are we being overcharged? I know you are on a tight budget so this is very important. But, you DO need cold a/c in the heat of the summer. Best of luck!
ReplyDelete