The A/C went out on my wife's 2000 Cabrio. The clutch engages, the fans come on, everything seems normal but no cold air coming out of the vents. With the engine off, I can turn the compressor's clutch easily by hand. Has the compressor pooped out? I know from experience with other cars that a compressor is hard to turn when it has good compression...but being that this is a VW and some things are different...???

I haven't had time, but this weekend I'm going to hook up my gauges to read the pressures. A couple of days ago I quickly hooked up the low side and the pressure read good, and it wouldn't take any freon...so I know it doesn't have a leak...

 

Finally got the a/c working again. I originally changed out the expansion valve and drier only...to no avail. I ended up buying a rebuilt compressor and that was the culprit. The funny thing is that I'm used to dealing with those compressors that you can barely turn by hand and the vw compressors have hardly any resistance. I opened up the old compressor and it consists of a series of pistons that crank in a clockwise motion. The pistons and cylinders were in excellent condition, but there is a valve (head type) that was probably causing the compressor to loose pressure buildup. That sucker is cooling down to a nippy 55 and the wife is happy.

 

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