Ok, I started having this problem back in February.

The ac works fine sometimes. Other times, it'll just stop blowing cold air. It'll keep blowing air, but it'll be hot. First instinct is that it needs a charge. Nope, it's full. No room for any more. It's not a relay because it's still blowing.

Honda wants to charge me 115 to just look at the car, and are estimating it'll be roughly 1800 to 2500 to fix the problem. I'm just wondering if anyone knows if it could be anything fixable on my own?

It works sometimes, it'll randomly kick on and start blowing cool air on long drives for a while. Then go back to hot air. Sometimes it'll work for a day, once it went for a whole week then stopped again. I just have no idea what to do.

Help?

 

First, when it is not cooling, leave the engine running and the A/C button pressed, pull over and open the hood. Observe if the plate in front of the compressor pulley is spinning (the plate drives the actual compressor mechanism, the pulley spins all the time the engine is running), and whether the radiator fans are on.

Finding the fans on but the compressor not, usually the problem is the compressor clutch gap. When the coil gets hot, it loses magnetic power and can't pull the clutch plate down onto the pulley if it is too far away. The gap should be less than .020 inches. Magnetic force works on the inverse square law so a small increase in distance due to wear is significant.

If the compressor has a single wire leading to it like older models, test if the wire is getting power when the compressor should be engaged but isn't. If the wire is powered up, take some shim washers out of the clutch.

As it works normally and gets cold sometimes, the refrigerant charge is OK. There aren't gremlins under the hood taking it out and putting it back when you aren't looking.

 

That actually sounds like it could be spot on. I took it to a mechanic that said there was not magnetic power but refused to work on it, told me promptly to take it to Honda.

I'll check this out tomorrow. Thanks!