95 Legacy Air Conditioning

[patcal]

On my 95 Legacy Outback the A/C clutch cycles on & off as I drive or sit & idle. The air is cold but I have never seen a compressor cycle unless there was a problem. I have a little froth in the sight glass. Any suggestions? Is this normal? Thanks.

[vrg3]

A little froth in the sight glass of an R-134a system is to be expected even with a correct charge; that's why a lot of R-134a systems don't even have a sight glass.

I don't know for sure about your 95 Outback in particular, but I think it's supposed to cycle on and off. It's part of the system that maintains an appopriate refrigerant pressure/temperature in the evaporator core. If you watch most cars idle with the A/C on you'll see the compressor cycle on and off.

Excessive cycling can be caused by an incorrect charge of refrigerant, so if you think it's cycling too often you could evacuate and recharge the system with the correct amount of refrigerant to be sure.

[patcal]

I bought a recharge kit & according to the gauge I was a little low but not much. I added just enough to get it about 35PSI on the gauge. The air is cold but the clutch still cycles. I guess I will live with it untill I develop a problem. Thanks for the info.

[vrg3]

Aaaah!

The gauges on those Interdynamics-type kits are next to useless. The packaging and advertising are very misleading about this.

But even a quality set of manifold gauges can't tell you if the system is properly charged.

The best way to make sure the system has the correct refrigerant charge is to evacuate it and then put in the correct charge (for your car I think it's somewhere around 24 ounces, which is usually around 2 cans).

I would really recommend doing that based on what you've said in this thread.