I've bought my '88 4Runner V6 4x4 a couple months back and have slowly been trying to restore it back to "health" (it was severely neglected for quite a while). The A/C worked great up until a few weeks ago when I went on a road-trip to the other side of the island and it started to cycle on and off. I searched the forums and found a lot of posts where people had problems after the conversion (to R134) or had bad compressors or fuses blowing... but nothing about an A/C Amplifier breaking or being a fix.

Anyway I took the risk and had a local shop upgrade and recharge my A/C system. They call me a couple hours into the job to say that the compressor is not getting power. After further research they say that my A/C Amplifier must be broken and is not giving power to the compressor (they are a legit shop and apparently did a lot of testing). They are quoting me $150 for the part and around $200 to put it in... so total of around $380 to have a system that *should* work (no guarantees of course).

Does anyone think this sounds reasonable or could they be missing the mark completely? I just want to avoid spending a decent chunk of money and then having them come back and say "well now we need to replace the compressor" and etc, etc.

Thanks in advance for any input!

 

It may have an A/C amplifier, who knows? I have never heard of such a thing though. Maybe someone else can help you. They could just run a hot wire directly to the compressor to see if the clutch will engage.

 

There is a AC amplifier in my 87 The 88 book is in the lawn shed.

To me it looks more like the AC computer because it has a whole bunch of controls going through it.

You might want to ask if they have checked the compressor clutch and the rest of the system so you don`t have to buy all new parts one piece at a time.

I will tell you that mine has been bypassed and seems to work just fine no doubt needs a recharge,

 

Hmm, so you bypassed yours? How did you do that and does it work ok?

I tried to drill the guy after reading the forum posts and they kept shutting me down saying stuff like "the compressor isn't getting power, that's the problem".

Thanks!

 

You could run a hot wire to the compressor clutch & use a toggle switch or run it into the factory dash switch. The only bad thing there is that your compressor wont cycle & it may get too cold & the low side pressure may drop too low. You would pretty much have to manually switch it off when it got too cold.

 

I don`t like how they are stating just the compressor is not getting power .

If you were my customer I would say I have checked the clutch it does pull in . then I check the low pressure switch that works like it should the Ac cut out relay also works . Which leads me to think it is the AC amplifier that is causing the problem.

The first thing they should have done is pull a vacuum to find out if you had a major leak. then went from there.

This is the price you have to pay sometimes . I would guess AC techs over there feel they are above whatever God .

About all I can do from like 4000 miles away