Recently the idler tensioner for the belt broke internally and of course my daughter was driving and ended up in the middle of the street (suicide turning lane) and called me. After her explaining what was going on I had he move it on to a side street and park it. When I got there I noticed the fanbelt loose and then found the idler tensioner spring had broken internally. She said that she had heard a losd bang/pop just before everything went haywire.
She had been having problems with the A/C not working & just blowing hot air. I charged up the low side and while servicing it noticed that the low side pressure was higher than normal change.
After replacing the idler tensioner and installing a new belt I had her start the van and watched to ensure everything was working fine. I had her cycle the A/C on and off I noticed that the A/C compressor pully/clutch was not moving as freely as it should have been. I took it to the dealer, because we had purchased an extended warrenty for the vehicle. Of course the miliage had gone over the limit and it swears that I'm still paying for warrenty. They looked at it and after serving it up they determined that the compressor was bad and that the dry/evaporator would need changed also due to contaminants from the compressor.

Well now down to the point finally, If it is only the pulley that is bad would it put any kind of contaminants into the dryer/eveporator system causing the need to change it and flush the system?
Or is there a way to remove the dryer/evaportor to see if it has any contamination in it and then just flush the lines and dryer and just change the compressor or just the compressor pulley?
I have been able to change out only the clutch and pulley on and old Focus that I had with no problems.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks

 

I'll give you my 2 cents, if the compressor engages and works, just not well, then it probably hasn't had enough internal damage to cause an issue. The filter / drier is a silver tube right behind the air filter housing, you can look in it and see debris if you had a system meltdown. The reason the system was low in the first place is probably the rear evaperator leaking. The warreny was extended on them to 70,000 miles so if you are under that it would still be covered. Running the a/c system low on freon is what causes the compressor damage because the freon is what carries the oil so the compressor doen't get enough lubrication.

Lot's of babbling but you probably need a compressor, filter / drier and rear evaperator.

 

Thanks Tizzy 1

I was going to take the drier off and look at it to see if anything came out and start from there, but now I will start with the inline tube first.

Thanks again.