1989 240SX Hatch: A/C issues

[K]

I'm not at all familiar with A/C systems or their operation, and i realize that i'm not giving up much info here, but if anyone has any ideas, i'd love to hear them. Miami in the summer sucks without a really good A/C system.

When i get in the car, after it has been sitting for a while, the A/C takes a really long time to get cold, especially if i am sitting in traffic idling. Now, of course all cars take time to cool off when parked in the sun, but this one seems to take much longer than normal (passengers have said the same thing). At night time (it's still plenty hot in Miami at night, just less so than the day time) the thing damn near freezes you out of the car, so i don't think it's a charge issue.

I'm wondering if my coolant temp sensor might be faulty as i run a bit rich, don't know if that would have anything to do with the A/C issue though.

This is an '89 hatch that has been converted from R12 to R134a.

Any help would be much appreciated.

[benemorius]

The s13 a/c system does not fair superbly well on 134a as far as cooling efficiency goes. Your description sounds about normal to me. Make sure your radiator fan shroud is in place, but aside from that you may just have to get used to staying in 2nd or 3rd gear to keep the rpms nice and high until the car cools off a bit. Obviously be sure you have recirculation turned on. I am all but certain that switching from the stock belt-driven fan to a pair of electrical fans would dramatically increase a/c performance, but I haven't verified that just yet.

[K]

Yeah, keeping the revs up does seem to help. Don't much want to do that while i'm sitting in traffic though...., but hey, guess i'll do what i have to.

I might do dual fans before August hits. For other reasons i'll need to do them anyway later on down the road, so it's not like i'll be wasting cash if it doesn't help AC performance.

Thanks for the info,

[benemorius]

If you do happen to do electric fans while it's still nice and hot, please come back and let us all know what effect it has on your a/c.

[K]

Will do. Hopefully it'll make at least some difference.