Hi, I am new to the site and was wondering if anyone may be able to give me some advice about the A/C system. My S40's A/C will shut off after about 10 min. of running, any thoughts on where to start?

 

my guess is the compressor's clutch gap is off and it needs to be reshimmed. Idea is that when the AC clutch slips it overheats and the system shuts it down.

 

Welcome to the Forum!

Reshimmed, or more accurately, deshimmed as you are removing one of the 3 spacer shims behind the clutch. This took me less than an hour on my 2005. Yours is a 2.4L or 2.5L engine on a 2004.5 or newer S40?

Do a forum search on reshimming. There are several links to well documented threads on how to do this yourself.

And it's free. Best fix ever.

 

I'll add a bit of info here as I just went through replacing my A/C pulley bearing and reshimming the clutch.

This is for a 2003 S40, if yours is newer it may not be the same.

I didn't have to remove anything to get the clutch off. I put the passenger side wheel up on a ramp just to have more room, but nothing else needed to be unbolted or anything. If you still have all of your plastic covers on down there some of those might need to come off, mine are missiong so I'm not sure.

The clutch came off using 3 bolts screwed into the holes in the clutch, make sure you get bolts around an inch or 26mm long. Any shorter and they will bottom out before pushing the clutch off enough and any longer there might not be enough clearance to get a wrench on them. My clutch was on TIGHT so I had to be patient and turn each bolt just a little at a time.

Reshimming was a PITA for me, as there was only 1 shim in there to begin with. If you find 2 or 3 you can just remove one of them, but I had to make one. I ended up getting some brass washers from the hardware store and sanding one down to about .04". The stainless shim in the clutch wasn't sanding down easily, the brass was much easier.

 

thanks, Livens. I think I'm going to have to do the same with mine. I'm unfamiliar with the terminology though. is the pulley the same as the clutch? In other words, once the belt is off, is the first (and only) item that comes off, the pulley/clutch?

 

The pulley and clutch are seprate. the pulley has the bearing in it and that bearing is pressed onto a flange coming out of the compressor. The clutch slides down onto the splined shaft coming through the middle of that flange.

If your bearing is good you don't need to pull the pulley/bearing off. There is a 10mm bolt holding the clutch on, after that you just need to use the 3 bolts to pull the clutch off of the shaft.

 

Thanks you all for the info. To answer Hudini's question, it's a 2005 2.4i non-turbo. Thanks again.

 

This is a pic of a 2005. Place on a jackstand, remove wheel, remove wheel well liner, remove 10mm bolt on clutch, pull clutch face off being very careful to not drop the 3 shims that sometimes come out with the clutch face, remove the thinnest shim first, then put it back together the same way you took it apart. Now test to see if problems continue. If yes then take it back apart and replace the first thin shim and remove the next thicker one. Test again. Of course the other way is to measure the clutch face gap and remove the washer that brings the clutch face gap back to the proper value. Except I don't know that value. Ok, back to testing.

 

I read two different air gap values - .3 MM and .4 MM (.012 or .016" for the metric challenged) where one board member noted a gap of .8 MM or more is where you have issues...

 

Thanks for the picture, it really helps seeing it from the side not from underneath. Now the next question I have is about the 3 bolts to remove the clutch, where should I go to get the bolts and what is the thread size it takes?

 

GeneC,

You need M5x0.8 bolts around 26mm long. I got mine at Lowe's, any hardware store should have them. Autozone around here has them too in packs... but they are 3 times the price of what a hardware store sells them for. I recommend hex head so you can put a socket and wrench on them.

 

Well thT lines up with my observations: my gap currently stands at .8mm and the ac does work most of the time but last year on the 10 hottest days of the summer it would konk out regularly. I'm going to try to open it up and rwmove some shims before the hot weather arrives. For my vehicle I think it calls for .3mm to .6mm for the gap.