Cheap & Quick A/C Condenser Cleaning
I've noticed lately that my A/C has been running a little warmer when idling or in stop & go city traffic. Today for example it was around 95 degrees and my A/C was blowing about 50 at the vent in stop/go city traffic.
I decided to try something I had seen at Home Depot called A/C Safe foaming cleaner. It's about $6 a can.
Says it's safe to use on vehicle A/C systems...so I decided to give the condenser a cleaning and see if there was any improvement.
Before I did this however, I did a little research and found that cleaning the condenser can help the compressor to work less and keep the high-side pressure lower. The benefit of that is the compressor won't wear out as quickly.
I went to the local do-it-yourself car wash and started spraying down the condenser. My condenser didn't seem to be too dirty — but I was pretty sure there was plenty of crap stuck up in between the fins that I couldn't see.
Anyways, I sprayed about 3/4 of the can and then waited about 5 minutes for the stuff to do its thing. I then sprayed the condenser down (with low pressure water mostly) and let it sit for a few before firing up the truck.
My main observation is that the A/C seemed to settle about 5 degrees cooler in the same outside temperature and traffic. It went from 50 down to about 45 degrees.
While freeway driving, my A/C typically runs about 42 degrees and after cleaning the condenser — it still runs about 42 degrees.
So it probably won't make your A/C run any colder either unless you are in city traffic.
I think the real benefit of this is that it supposedly makes the whole system run more efficiently which ultimately may save you some money by avoiding a costly repair.
For $6 and 20 minutes of your time, I think it's a worthwhile investment and could easily be added to any preventative maintenance list no matter the budget.
