Aristo82

Around last week, I took a couple of my buddies around town during the night. While I was driving around, I noticed some odd intermittent repetitive noise from somewhere. It almost sounded like a tupperware tumbling in my dryer at max speed. I did not think too much of it and called it a night.

The next morning, I took them on a long road trip to Tenessee and came back around 2AM the next morning. Just as I was about to pull up onto the driveway, I noticed the same exact noise again. I opened up my door and noticed that this was coming from the engine!!

Later that morning I popped the hood and confirmed that this noise was coming around from the engine area. At closer inspection I found that something melted down around the compressor area (bits and pieces of rubber stuck to splash shield). I loosened up the pulley to the compressor and that fixed the problem, so I pretty much cut the belt off so that I could at least drive it around.

Took it to the dealer today and was told that the compressor seized up and clutch fell off somewhere . They are ordering the part and it should get here next week.

I really did not expect this from an 04M with 70K. Especially considering the fact that they have been running this model since 1996 and compressor design seems to be exactly the same as Legends and some early TLs, I would have thought they had this countermeasured by 04M.

Anybody go through a similar experience?

Aristo82

Well, I got my vehicle back. Everything seems to be working much better with the exception of belt chirps after the vehicle sits out in the sun for a while. Took it to the dealer again. They sprayed some lubricant down so we'll see if that fixes things.

On another note, for those who bought their RL used or had the in-cabin filter replaced at dealer. You guys may want to check and see if the filter is installed in the right way. I never had much complaints about my A/C performance, but I noticed that whoever installed it before installed the filter backwards (and also did a poor job gluing the glove box damper clip back together). I have much much more airflow now that it is installed in the correct way.

Oh and another thing. I am gonna test out an alternative (and much cheaper) way to hook up an Ipod to my 04M RL . I think it will only work with 04Ms. I don't know how many 04M owners are out there, but anybody interested in this if it works? If so, I will try to take good notes when I do it.

Aristo82

I tried the Ipod mod (actually, it is more like aux-in mod) and it actually worked! Nothing permanent yet, but jerry-rigged it and it did carry sound. It involves taking out part of the trunk liner and making a few changes to the connector coming into the XM receiver. Anybody with factory XM radio who is not using XM can take advantage of this.

If I see requests on how to do this, I would be more than happy to share this knowlege.