Hello everyone

I bought this V50 1.6d about a month ago, it has around 244k km under the hood. Service book is up to date. It has a dual side air con / climate control system.

From the start it seemed to have some issues with the air con not seeming to cool. I mentioned it to the seller and he took it to his shop and checked coolant, pump etc. no issues. So I bought the car about 4 days later.
In this late summer heat, the air con pump seems to be turning on / off a bit at random. If the car is in idle, you can hear the pump turn on, and the engine gets "to do some work", but it only seems to be on for like 10-30sec and then turns back on another 30 or so sec later.
I'm planning on calling the seller later today, but I just want to know if this is "normal" behaviour of the air con system...?

Also it seems to have 1 cold side and one "hotter" side. To explain this better, its like the driver side is getting the colder air, where the passenger side is getting "warmer" air. Where I'm thinking there is a bad sensor or something similar. Where are these located so that I might be able to test this?

- Thanks for your time and your help

 

Classic signs of a system that's low on refrigerant. Have that checked, or learn to use one of the inexpensive and widely available DIY kits, and add the R134a yourself. They're limited, and not really useful for a lot of troubleshooting, but are good for identifying systems with insufficient gas to run correctly. The way I use them is to verify that the pressure (low side) is lower than it should be (based on the DIY kit gauge), and then add gas while monitoring the vent temperature (in your case, on the "hot side"). Then I add gas a little at a time until the outlet temperature stops dropping. That's going to get it very close to perfect.

 

Completely forgot I had this post.

This was the problem. Thank you for the reply