Keepin' It Cold

A funny thing happened on the way to the highway to go to Laramie last Friday. All of a sudden the A/C on my car stopped blowing cold. Tim, Kevin, and I played the guessing game for a little bit, speculating on what the culprit might be. In any case, the car was headed to the shop on Monday.

I headed over to Auto Imports after doing a little calling around for VW shop recommendations. Brenner recommended 303 Motorsports, but Wheatridge is kind of a trek for the back and forth on the commuter and a long way to have somebody shuttle me over. Scott recommended Autobahn Premier, but they just moved to a new building, weren't taking any customers this week and they don't do major A/C work.

Auto Imports started into the diagnostics, pulled up some fault codes and determined that the electromagnetic clutch on the compressor was stuck on an open circuit and needed to be replaced (see part #16). Not too bad, $700 in parts and labor total including the diagnostic. They had a remanufactured clutch in stock to install, installed it and called with the bad news. The clutch may very well have been bad, but the compressor itself was not functioning. I had them check into a remanufactured compressor . . . it would have saved me a whopping $40, uh no thanks. They ordered a new compressor, complete with clutch assembly (see part #12) and completed the work on Tuesday.

I don't recommend replacing one of these, they are spendy. I could have theoretically saved a couple hundred dollars by either waiting and having them shop around for the part of by going to Meineke, but I'd rather take it to somebody who knows their way around my car a little better.

I will be offering air conditioned rides at $20 a mile to pay off the repairs, come one, come all . . . only 87 miles to go.