It saves your fuel!
Driving with your car air-conditioner off saves like 25% of your fuel. This is fairly true when driving through the traffic jam or lower speed driving such as driving in the city area where you need to stop and go often. Why is that? The main components that makes the air-conditioner works is called a compressor. It is a moving part and moving parts will always experience wear and tear.
Another benefit would be, you save money by not having to often pay for the air conditioning maintenance. A refill of a R-134 gas is RM50++. For the R-12 gas is just RM15 but it's not ozone friendly. I don't think it does make a different when these gaseous are released. It is bound going to happen anyway when things break down. However, before you go for the cheaper option, make sure that the components can accept the R-12 or you'll end up damaging it even more.
3 weeks ago, after my last car air conditioning service which was 15 months ago, I spent my new job's second paycheck (my first paycheck was worth 3 days but it is still a paycheck of course) to repair my car's air conditioned. I can't believe I've been driving around in a hot car all these while. This time, I didn't sent my car to the shop I sent last year. Got a few snapshots while waiting for the repair job.
The above image is when the mechanic want to clear out all the air conditioner gas. Talk about saving the environment huh? For a full service, the condenser inside the dashboard compartment needs to be removed and cleaned. Normally all the dust is collected there.
After soaking the condenser inside some liquid chemical bowl and blow dry it, the mechanic then re-assembled the component. If this component has signs of puncture, it will puncture your wallet so a piece of advice, make sure your mechanic don't fool you by this trick.
The repair job took almost 2 hours to finish. In the end, the cost of repair was just RM250 although the compressor is now creating a squeaking noise. I should have got the air conditioning repaired earlier with that kind of money if only I wasn't so stingy. I don't really care about the noise as long as I'm cool. The belt is causing the noise because the compressor is now worn out and at anytime it can get jammed, that was what my mechanic said. A new compressor would cost around RM1000 while a reconditioned one is only RM300++. I'll take the latter because I like to keep my cost down but in the mean time, I'll give the sick compressor a hard time.
The visit to the mechanic wasn't so bad. I met an attractive young lady as you can see in the picture above. No, not that chinese lady who's on the phone, the girl who is sms'ing beside my car. She was installing a new set of speakers for her dad's black Nissan Sentra. Apparently she lives in my neighbourhood and his dad owns an office nearby. She was complaining about the car's high fuel consumption. At least my waiting moment kind of got interested, unfortunately I didn't get her number which I should have done. Oh well, I can always fabricate a 'bump into', after all she lives in my neighbourhood, right?
My next paycheck would be spent for my torn CV joint cover which will only cost me RM15 if I bought it directly from a spare part shop. Where I live, it's like the heaven of spare parts from what other mechanics has told me. The only thing that I have to bear is the labour charge which might reach RM60++. Another thing would be to change my front tyres and to do the wheel alignment. Altogether, I have a budget of RM300 for that, I hope I don't exceed that amount.
Well, who said owning is car is easy.. ;-)
