Air conditioner 97 Maxima SE question

[leojs]

Hi all,

I have a 97 Maxima SE and the air conditioner broke. Black car with black leather and summertime just don't mix

Took it to a local shop, they tried to recharge it, was cold for a couple days then hot again. Took it back, they said they ran some more tests and the leak appears to be up under the dash somewhere and said it would be really hard to access and require a lot of labor (think he said they would need to take the dash out?). It was going to cost over $600.00

The car has over 219,000 miles on it, so I didn't want to put $600 in it-- I bought another car (Infiniti GX35, nice!) but the Max still runs amazing so I was thinking since it's off the road now of trying to fix it myself.

Does anyone have any good info on the A/C systems or know what might be involved in fixing this? Any 'how to' out there on this? Thanks in advance for any help!

PS - is there a search option with this forum system? If so, finding it isn't very intuitive. I wanted to search for air conditioner posts in case this was already answeredin the past but can't find a search...

[maxhopper]

If it's inside the car, it's got to be the evaporator or the lines going to it. You can put a dye in the a/c system that makes finding leaks alot easier. The dye will show up under UV light.

Here is the FSM section on the heating and a/c.http://www.nicoclub.com/FSM/maxima/1997/HA.pdf