My wife has a 2012 Volvo S60 with 88,000 miles. When you turn on the fan for the AC you get a slight whining noise. It only seems to be with the AC and not the heater. The fan does blow, but she just called and said the air is not cold at all. One shop says it is a blower motor and the other says the air compressor, condensor and expansion valve.

I would love to get peoples insights. I have a buddy who is mechanic. I understand that with the blower motor you have to take the entire dash off.

How difficult is it to replace the air compressor, condensor, and expansion valve. Approximately how many hours?

Thanks so much.

 

Too many possible causes to guess, not enough info to diagnose here. First step is to determine if your system is holding its charge. If its not then you can have a shop inject a dye to see whats leaking - ie an o-ring? evaporator? condensor?. Is the compressor kicking on? there are high and low pressure sensors that will keep the compressor from engaging if the refridgerant level is too low or too high. There are also temp sensors which can be at fault. Do you see the AC and REC light flashing? did you have a tech scan for error codes in the climate control computer? The blower motor is easy - does it turn on and change speeds in manual mode?

I doubt that both the compressor and condensor would fail at the same time but repairing either will require a installing the new components (either would be several hour's labor as the condensor is in there with the radiator so removal takes some disassembly, and the compressor on many models is hard to access and requires removing drive belts etc). Worst case would be a leak in the evaporator which requires disassembling the dash (very labor intensive - 7-8 hours of labor would be my guess). Then you'd need a full system vacuum and recharge which adds another hour of labor and parts. Whenever the system is opened up, most techs will replace the expansion valve and the receiver/dryer so there's few more parts.