I live in Las Vegas, NV and 2 times now I've been driving around and my AC has started to blow hot air. It's been like 114 degrees here recently so I am a little ticked. I take it in this morning to Desert Nissan where I bought the car and they tell me they can't find anything wrong. Do they think it's in my head? It's very erratic but it does go out. What should I do. SHould I try to demand a new AC unit if it happens again? I really hate these service guys. 90% of the time they can't reproduce the problem. Has any of you had problems with your AC besides the fact it blows like crap. Thanks for any help.

 

I live in LV also, I hate Desert Nissan and I had some success with the Henderson Nissan dealer. My AC seems to run hot air on some occassion and I thought it was me due to the 114-119 degree temp. I also notice my fan comes on most of the the time driving and while Iam at a light. So far I just chalked it up to the high temp here in LV. I am interested in your situation and fix.

 

Are you having noise from the engine area just as the TSB is suggesting. Regardless, I would still have the AC kit installed to see if it solves the problem.

http://www.nissan-techinfo.com/nissa...1.asp?mscssid=

 

I'd bet this is an electronics problem. I've never had a fully automatic AC before but I did have a 94 Ford T-Bird with a semi-automatic AC. It would control fan speed and blend heat if needed but I had to set where the air went. Anyway, the only time I had trouble with it, turned out to be a bad temp sensor.

I don't know if this is your problem or not. It could be a temp sensor, a defective control unit, a bad heater control valve (leaks or simply doesn't close completely), or possibly a bad actuator that moves the control doors in the AC's destribution plenum assembly itself. There's a "lot" of stuff to check beyond how much freon is in the system and a bad actuator (if I understand the mechanics of these things correctly) might not generate a fault code, depending on how it's failing.

Unfortunately, tracking down these things can be a real PITA sometimes and the actual gremlin usually turns out to be something relatively simple, just not easy to find. It sounds like your biggest problem is getting the dealer to invest the time and effort.

One of the problems that dealers have to face in these cases is that the manufacturer will only pay a predetermined rate for repairs and sometimes that rate isn't very realistic in terms of the actual time invested. I used to work for a Lincoln dealer and we had a new car off the convoy truck come in with an electrical short that fed power throught the entire lighting system every time the turn signals were turned on. The dome lights, dash lights, etc. would flash dimly when the turn signals were active. The turn signals themselves looked normal otherwise. The mechanic assigned to this inenviable job refused to touch it unless he was paid the actual time it took to find the problem. Anyone who's tried to diagnose this kind of problem can attest to the fact that finding an electrical short can be VERY frustrating. Anyway, long story short (or at least shorter), the problem wound up being in the tail light bulb itself. All the wiring looms were fine, the light bulb, even though it appeared to be operating normally, was shorted internally (where you can't see it) and feeding power back through the rest of the car's electrical system. The end result was that it took 2.5 days and almost 20 hours of work to diagnose and replace - "a light bulb!" The dealer had to get authorization from Ford before he started work and they Ok'd it as long as he punched the back of the warrantee claim on the time clock to document his time. You might have to suggest something like this with your Nissan dealer. I don't know how Nissan usually handles such things but it's something to bring up if the dealer is resistant.

Sorry this got more long winded than I entended. I just hope it helps.

Good luck!
Drive Safe,
Steve R.

 

So I've been driving a few days now with the AC full blast and it has been fine. Although it's still hot as hell. I don't know much about these things so hopefully this isnt a stupid question, but I have one of those grounding wire kits installed. I know it just basically runs to the battery, so is the kit totally out of the question as to a potential problem? The only other mod besides that is a grill-tech grill up front. I'll keep ya'll informed if anything else comes up. Thanks for the feedback. Looks as if I'm the only one having this problem though. Just my luck

 

This problem shouldn't have anything to do with the grounding kit. I don't have this problem but I am having that growl or buzz coming from the engine area when the AC is on, I'll probably have this TSB completed next week.

 

I just had my compressor replaced re the tech bulletin regarding compressor noise from the stock compressor. The AC kit was ordered and installed. When I picked the car up I had a similar problem to yours in that periodically the compressor would cycle off by itself but would come back on again within 5-10 minutes. I took the car back today to have this problem resolved and the dealer said they had put too much freon into the system when they replace the compressor. They said, said today, that they re-serviced the AC and all is fine. I have not had the compressor cycling off problem but the air is about 20% warmer than my other cars....so now I have to take it back and get them to detemine what the problem is.