E53 air con compressor not switching ON

kanewesley · Post by **kanewesley** » Sat May 12, 2018 9:59 pm

thanks, youve helped a lot

Greydog · Post by **Greydog** » Sun May 13, 2018 7:21 am

My fan self tests at engine start (I thought they all did, could be wrong though) It has to be very hot and normally sitting in traffic for it to kick in though.

henrym3 · Post by **henrym3** » Sun May 13, 2018 5:23 pm

yea, mine self tests at start up, but only turns slowly a couple of turns and then off. Even when parked with a/c and engine on it only runs for a very short time, if your viscous fan or in my case electric fan is in good nick it seems to drag enough cooling air through that the a/c fan rarely has to work.

kanewesley · Post by **kanewesley** » Sun May 13, 2018 9:00 pm

Take everything back I said.......BMW.....absolute crap.

Ive been driving for 43 years and never had a car with so much trouble.

Yet another 55 quid spent yesterday, on aircon, seemed to get it going after regassing,
and yesterday was cloudy.

Went out in it today, sun shining, happy as larry......10 mins in a traffic jam, heard a clunk and guess what.....no more aircon

I've had vauxhall vivas, marinas, ford cortinas, vauxhall cavaliers, vectras, Renault Clios,...all better than this pile of all I can liken it to is cheap chinese gun metal.

I had a vauxhall frontera for 10 years and it beats this pile of expensive metal into the floor, even though bucket mouth jeramy clarkson bad mouthed them.

my aircon on the old Fronty was as good on the last day of the 10th year as it was when I bought it 2nd hand.

Never, never needed regassing.

Please , dont say get another Frontera then, Ive heard it all before.

So, before I ring the garage who regassed it saturday to see if I can have my 55 quid back and probably another argument.......anyone any ideas????????/

X5Sport · Post by **X5Sport** » Sun May 13, 2018 9:09 pm

Suspect leak in that case as it was working. If the pressure drops then the system will shut off. If there was a clunk and then it stopped, that suggests a pressure loss causing the compressor clutch to disengage.

Did the regasser give you any indication of what pressure they were seeing before they started? It sounds as if a dye tracer needs adding in to see if there are any signs of leakage on pipe joins, connection points or on the compressor itself.

One of the issues with the modern ac systems is the refrigerant itself. The old (and now illegal) refrigerants rarely leaked unless there was a hole in the system and also provided lubrication to all of the seals. Current refrigerants need oil adding with the gas and unless the ac is run at least monthly the seals dry out and the system then leaks. This is why I now never turn mine off as the car doesn’t get used much (and to be honest it doesn’t make any difference in fuel economy anyway).

kanewesley · Post by **kanewesley** » Mon May 14, 2018 9:32 am

yes, the pressure was very low before he started but put that down to gradual life leakage.

one thing though, when it did work after regassing, the aux fan didnt come in.

He said the car would be ok when car was moving but when it was stood, the evap system would probably overheat and shut off the aircon but it would start again when the car moved and things cooled down.

It did shut off in the traffic jam, there was a noise, the engine tickover coughed, but the aircon didnt start again when moving and never has since.

X5Sport · Post by **X5Sport** » Mon May 14, 2018 9:47 am

If it is the fan then it either has to be replaced with OEM (expensive), one from a scrappy, or a 12v fixed speed fan and a manual switch. Fixing the fitted fan needs specialist electronics knowledge to identify whether it is the fan, or fan controller, or ac controller that has the problem.

One member on here replaced the OEM fan with a 12v fixed speed one and put a switch inside the cabin to turn it on/off

Alan Gunn · Post by **Alan Gunn** » Mon May 14, 2018 11:31 am

Have you looked if the belt is still on.
When I had my regass the machine did a vacuum test to see if it would hold for twenty minutes.
If it hadn't of held then the regass would have been aborted.

kanewesley · Post by **kanewesley** » Mon May 14, 2018 11:13 pm

The belts still on Alan, it was a machine what did the recharging automatically. It took about 25 mins so I presume the machine will have done the necessary.

If its the fan, (although I dont know why the aircon started up without it), it'll be one off fleabay.

If I could get hold of a signal generator, I could possibly test the one on the car, although it may need a signal of a "certain shape"....ie squarewave?

kanewesley · Post by **kanewesley** » Tue May 15, 2018 8:51 am

I've just read that there is a pressure relief valve on the system as a safety measure which vents if the system pressure climbs too high.

Is this true?

It makes sense that when the car was stood in the traffic jam, there was no cooling of the system with the car moving and air rushing through the fan radiator. The system pressure climbed too high and the relief valve vented before the system became too pressurised.

Is this true? is there a relief valve?

If so, it would explain now why the aircon no longer works, ie...i'm back to where i was on saturday with too little gas in the system to allow the compressor on

lezmtaylor · Post by **lezmtaylor** » Tue May 15, 2018 9:39 am

See post 2 , Alan post re position of release valve.

Lez

Alan Gunn · Post by **Alan Gunn** » Tue May 15, 2018 10:56 am

The machine that was on mine was automatic but it took the best part of an hour.
I think the pressure test is for 20 minutes on it's own.

kanewesley · Post by **kanewesley** » Tue May 15, 2018 7:34 pm

Lez . . Alans post refers to pressure SWITCH.. . Not a PRESSURE RELIEF VALVE bud.

X5Sport · Post by **X5Sport** » Tue May 15, 2018 8:08 pm

Have a look at this set of guides. It’s a copy of the BMW Technical Instructions (TIS) and I have filtered for the E53 3.0d.

Drill down into the air con section (Section 64) to see what is in there that might help

Section 64 50 covers the ac checks.

https://www.newtis.info/tisv2/a/en/e53- ... r-manuals/

kanewesley · Post by **kanewesley** » Sat May 19, 2018 1:17 pm

Well.....I thought I had a bit of technicality about me but I'm not so sure now.

I'm a an electrical technician of 43 years, maintenance electrician, pretty au feit with pc's. I program PLC's in Seimans S7 and Schneider, and SCADA programming.

I've just bought BMW Scanner 1.4.0 and for the life of me cannot get it to work to try and find my problem on my aircon an my X5.

Nothing, no driver anywhere will let the scanner work on my laptop running windows 7.

Can anyone help me get this software installed before I drive my X5 into the river at the bottom of my garden and then throw myself in.......please !!

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E53 air con compressor not switching ON

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