Mine is starting to feel closer to lukewarm. Better than fan-only but lacks a punch.

How long is AC supposed to last before requiring some type of service?

 

there is no "life".
the compressor, relay, or blower may die at any time...even tho it's a fairly new car.

if you are having A/C problems, you may troubleshoot the easy things like if the relay is blown, or if the compressor is still spinning/engaging.
that's about it for easy troubleshooting...perhaps have a mechanic look at the A/C system to diagnose it further

 

7 years old
121k miles
cold as day 1

 

Make sure the condenser is clean. You can spray water through the grill and down in front of the condenser with the hood open. BTW, the condenser in in front of the radiator. People think the thing they see at the front of the car is the radiator but it's not. The radiator is behind the condenser. The thing that gets all beat up and embedded with bugs is your condenser. If it's not dissipating heat from the refrigerant effectively, you're not going to get very cold air.

After that, go to a trusted mechanic and have them measure the refrigerant level. The crappy thing is, if it's low, they'll probably insist on evacuating the entire system then refilling with the specified volume of refrigerant. That isn't really necessary IMO. It's easy enough to just add a little bit of refrigerant until the pressure on the high and low side are within a reasonable level based on the tech manual. There's a graph that takes into account humidity and temperature. Based on that, you can get a pretty good idea. Honda's seem to run a little lower on the pressure scale than the generic tables so the official tech manual should be used. For most Honda's I've worked on, it's around 35-50PSI on the low end and 190-225PSI on the high end.

 

2011 TSX with 65K on it and had the compressor replaced (leaking according to Honda diagnostics) and went ahead and did the condenser too. Blows pretty equivalent to when I first got the car now. If your A/C isn't blowing like it used to, you probably have a leak somewhere (as long as all the components are still working that is).

New Honda A/C systems don't seem all that great either...replaced a compressor under warranty for a 2016 Civic we have due to it leaking also. Forums make it look like it's a pretty evident problem with the Civics at least.

 

Yikes, how much was the compressor replacement?

And how did you run the diagnostics? Can you do it yourself?

Just noticed my OP didn't show signature; seems to be a forum bug.

 

I took the car to Honda 2 years ago when my AC was blowing warm. Specifically for me, the driver vents were way warmer than passengers (and this makes sense in hindsight because the compressor is closer to the passenger side of the vehicle). They only charged me $100 to refill the system and add a dye. I'm pretty sure it's usually $150-180, I'm not sure why I only had to pay $100, maybe because they didn't find my leak at the time. Just told me to come back when it got bad again.

Honda gave me 2 options to replace the compressor. Aftermarket one (from 1-800 radiator) for 900-ish + whatever taxes and fees they have, or OEM which was close to 2K...both only came with 1-yr warranties I believe.

I ended up having a guy my friend personally knows do it for me. He gets parts with lifetime warranty (from 1-800 radiator as well) and said he if I ever have any issues I can bring it back to him and he will fix it, so that sold me. Plus the price for both parts and receiver-dryer and install was about 40-50% cheaper than most shops and I gave him all cash for a discount ($650 total). 1 month in, still working good as new.

But for me, I called around 5-7 shops to compare quotes. Lowest I got just for compressor replacement was $800. Most other places wanted around $1,100-1,400 for both parts and install. Only was getting 3-yr warranty from some places IF I replaced both parts.

You can do it yourself to check, you just need a A/C leak test kit. Pretty sure ChrisFix on YT has videos of it. Have to pump in some refrigerant into the lines and you need a UV light to see if the dye is leaking.

 

Impressive mileage/year.

2011 with 72k miles and mine still blows nice and cold. Fingers crossed it stays this way.

 

After a move, I now only drive on weekends, and not even every weekend. Maybe logged 3k miles over the past year.

Probably pretty expensive to keep the car but doing it for the convenience for now.

 

Once in a while my AC seems a bit off. It's usually because I've got the air circulation button set for outside air flow, not recirculating the cabin air. Other than my du'hs here and there, it's still pretty cold.

 

Ah, if you set it on outside air flow, is it supposed to just be weaker, or completely disabled?

 

The airflow is weaker but the issue in the summer is if you have it on fresh air you are pulling in hot and humid air so it can effect how well the system cools. The brief version is use recirculated air until the cabin is where you want it to be then you can switch to fresh (if you set the system to Auto you can get an idea of ideal operation, as it will adjust recirculated/fresh as necessary).

 

My 60,000 mile TSX wagon still blows cold. Unlike my old Chevy Silverado which was on it's 2nd Compressor of it's eventual 3 before I would give up on it.

 

it was until the day I sold it, with 9 years and 130k miles (factory AC)

 

My AC isn't fully cold either. And when I floor it, it turns hot until I let off the gas.

2014 tsx 60k miles

 

I keep a thermostat in the vent and my AC will produce 45 degrees Fahrenheit at moving paces and the temp
will rise a little if a dead stop for awhile. The thermostat in the vent is great way to keep up with AC performance.

2012 TSX, 108.9K Miles

 

In a new Sentra rental this weekend, the AC was so cold that I had to dial it pretty close toward neutral temp.
Always had the AC on coldest in the TSX and still sometimes felt I wanted more.
Arggg.