'87 16v - a/c problems? - plus, a funny side note... there was smoke involved..

[David Liu <dyliu@pacbell.net>]

folks-

it's a hot day here in the bay area and it's gonna get hotter. i finally 
decided to take a look around and see what's going on with my a/c. mind 
you, it worked relatively well (i.e. cool enough) two years ago. i could 
tell that it was slowly losing the ability to chill. then, when my heater 
switch (upper) metal arm thing that hooks into the servo and line for the 
heater valve in the engine bay broke, it's been arm-less, and therefore, 
useless.

also keep in mind that my 4th position doesn't work on the fan switch (we 
went over this before and it seems like i need to replace the relay or 
something)

so i take all this apart today, make sure that the heater valve is switched 
off, servo set to blow in the center console, and the lower switch set to 
the left/blue (no problem here).

as someone once mentioned in one of the archived emails that the bentley is 
useless when it comes to a/c (it's true), i went step by step with the 
manual anyway. i take a look at the receiver/drier's sight glass and 
there's no bubbles/foam (which according to the bentley would mean that my 
coolant/r12 would be spent). the compressor from a visual look appears to 
be well. the belt at least turns the thing. who knows about the actual 
system pressure. all hoses seem to be in order and there doesn't appear to 
be any leaks..

since this is new to me and the weather's getting hot, i'm wondering if 
there's anything else i can check before i would have to ask myself whether 
it's worth taking to the certified folks to get the system recharged (_if_ 
that's the problem)??

thanks!


ps - as i was putting my center console back together, i routed the 
el-cheapo radio shack "fake alarm" (i.e. blinking red led that hooks up to 
your ground/hot - which i had hooked up to one of my fuses and the 
circlular metal prong-thing to the right of the fusebox) under the shifter 
console. as i was doing this, i noticed that the wires were heating up. 
wtf?? all of a sudden the led blew out on me and there was smoke! holy 
shit! so i start frantically pulling the wires out of the console which was 
also routed under the carpet cover on the driver's side. i tossed them out 
of the car as fast as i could. then i look around and nothing really seemed 
to be out of order, except the huge cloud of smoke in the cabin (luckily i 
had my sunroof open). as the smoke was slowly clearing i started yanking 
out the fuse with my pliers that one of the wires was attached to as well 
as the other terminal that was hooked into the circular prong-thing. when 
the smoke cleared, i looked back inside and noticed that this light blue 
wire that has a male/female insulated hook-up was also singed. what is 
that?? i wonder if it came with the car stereo installation way back when. 
i now have taped over the place where the insulation was burned, unplugged 
the hook-up, and am wondering what the hell happened?? aside from the 
obvious that it was a short. but where/how? there's a moral to this story 
and it's two-fold. 1. _if_ you get a fake car alarm/blinking led, get one 
that's battery powered from it's own supply (like one AA/9v or whatever) 
and 2. always keep a fire extinguisher around when you work around your car.




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