In the recent hot weather my wife noticed that the air conditioning in her Mazda 323 (1998 new shape) was not chilling sufficiently. The car was looked at by a Mazda garage, who re-gassed the system, added a flourescent dye and pointed out that the condenser had sustained a tiny hole (possibly made by a stone entering through the lower front grille at speed), which was now leaking out the refrigerant. I looked at this myself and whilst the leak is very slow and the air conditioning will probably go on working to an acceptable level for the rest of the summer, we would like to get it repaired at some stage.
The garage estimated around £400 (parts and labour) to fix it but I would like to get the opinion of an independent air conditioning specialist. Does anybody know of a good, trustworthy, reasonably-priced outfit in the Woking area of Surrey?
Thanks in advance!
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Not an Air Conditioning Specialist, however you could try Leonard
Daborne at Chobham (Rover Specialists) but repairs to all makes.
Andrew
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try Delta at Barnett Wood Lane, Ashtead (nr. L'head, 5mins off M25)
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There is an outfit actually in Woking who I found to be good.
They are called Reader Air and can be found at
www.readerair.co.uk
Hope this is of some help.
Cheers
from Jase
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I've looked at a few suppliers catalogues, and of those that list a part for a 323 from '96 (not sure if that covers your model), but prices seem to be about £170 for the part. You can probably get away without replacing the filter/drier, and I'm not sure of the time to fit, but Mazdas are usually straightforward, so reckon on 1.5 hours. But these won't be genuine parts, so the price from the dealer doesn't look too bad, especially if it includes the drier. In future, do what I do, and put some fine mesh in front of the condenser, and eliminate any future problems.
If it was me doing the job, I'd only go to Mazda and get the genuine part, then I know it would fit and last, even though I wouldn't make a lot of money on the part.
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Have a look at www.autoair.co.uk. I think the outfit is based at Kingsfold, W. Sussex.
Also, I was told that agents' routine aircon services usually only involve external inspection. A good specialist will recover the gas, recharge it, making a note of pressures obtained and recording all this on the invoice. The work will probably cost £100 but, if you go back to the same specialist next time with this record, expect a reduction in cost, as it should save a lot of time.
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The Institute of Vehicle Airconditioning, on www.instvac.co.uk/,
can give you the phone number of one of its members near you.
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The answer to your question is given by HJ at
www.honestjohn.co.uk/faq/faq.htm?id=14
He gives details of a specialist in Byfleet.
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