Air con compressor - how much to change

[Kev_Mc]

I can get a new part (4635892) for £220 ish, but how many hours would this take to fit? Would there be any other parts needed (new belts etc + regas)? What is a typical hourly rate for a Saab indie in the Midlands?

[Audax]

Workshop manual suggests a couple of hours including refill of gas (you need to drain and fill the system!) . I'd be charging you in the region of 2 hours labour, an aircon fee (to cover expensive aircon machine) with gas at however much it needs as it's unlikely to be full. I'd also suggest replacing the belt unless it was very new and checking for bad pulleys. I'd be expecting anything from around £120 all the way to £300 (expensive dealer price).

I'd also point out though that whenever a customer supplied their own parts they would get no warranty on the job. We would only warranty a job if we diagnosed the fault and supplied all parts which would get you cheap (at cost) onward repairs if necessary and a complete warranty on any failure of a part while the part was in warranty. This was to counter a few times where people would turn up with a part that they'd sourced based on the advice of another garage or the Internet and wanting it done on the cheap, some were surprised that we were not prepared to cut them any slack when it turned out to be either a faulty part (very common with cheap 1.9 alternators) or the wrong fault diagnosed despite being warned before the job was started.

[Kev_Mc]

Place I'm looking at were talking about 3 hours ("hard to get at in a 9-3"). They were talking about £500+ then £50 on top for the re-gas. Seems a tad expensive to me or am I underestimating the work?

[Audax]

Place I'm looking at were talking about 3 hours ("hard to get at in a 9-3"). They were talking about £500+ then £50 on top for the re-gas. Seems a tad expensive to me or am I underestimating the work?

That'd be £420 without vat, that sounds very expensive unless it included the compressor, I kinda recall the job being around £500 inc. vat with gas and using a recon/exchange compressor when I used to price it up. Saab workshop manual says 0.8 hours to replace compressor on a 9-3 and then 1.1 hours for taking out the gas and leak testing and 0.2 of an hour to "check performance". In all honesty I'd expect it to take around 3 hours for the total job. It's not like you actively do much with the aircon machine while it's working but Saab are being pitiful in the workshop time for replacing an aircon compressor but then times always got massaged for certain jobs as these figures are used by fleet managers and magazines to create pricing guides.

[Kev_Mc]

Maybe not so bad then - it's £500 (ish) including a new compressor, then £50 for a re-gas. I assume they don't have a machine to re-gas so take it elsewhere. Thanks for the info

[Audax]

Ask them about the breakdown in pricing for that, it might be:

£200 compressor
£210 3 x £70/hour labour
£ 82 VAT

or, if they just called up their usual place for a compressor and they are more expensive:

£280 compressor
£135 3 x £45/hour labour
£ 83 VAT.

Either way, it might just be that they are expensive (and good!) but I don't think they are out to rob you.

[fka]

Maybe a stupid question but is your compressor actually knackered or is it just the clutch/ pully that's gone?
I'd run my 93 with a short aux belt on, to bypass the compressor, for a few years as the pully was making a horrible noise.

I picked up a new pully, coil and clutch for around £150. It took about an hour to fit and solved my problem.
It's been an absolute god send to have a/c back this summer!

D

[ade wilkins]

Hi, if you get a second hand compressor, a new belt, its quite an easy swap over, old compressor comes out via the bottom by the oil cooler pipes, then go and get new one regassed. All in all about £100.

[sgould]

My WIS recommends that a new reservoir/dryer is fitted if you leave the system open for more than 15 minutes. 

I don't think that mine has ever been changed, I queried it with the service guys when they did the recent repairs to the pipes, but they said it is unlikely to matter...

...but the temperature is not as low as it should be according to WIS.  Never has been.  Maybe the AC has been open to air too long, before I owned the car.

[ade wilkins]

Did hear something about that, but I guess if you can swap it over fairly quickly it shouldn't hurt ? One I changed earlier this month was fine though, took off belt and compressor, replaced with second hand compressor and new belt, took it for a regas and works fine, really cold, no smoking... Groupon do vouchers for air con gas, £22 was the best I found