1.9TD Xantia A/C Compressor Noise

[Zelandeth]

Made a realisation a little while ago that the rattling noise in my engine bay that I had been scratching my head about the source of for a while stops completely when the compressor is running.

My guess is that this is due to wear in the bearings in the free wheeling mechanism on the compressor pulley.

It hasn't got any worse since I got the car, so I wonder if there may be an element of adjustment involved here too...

Any word on whether this can be sorted out or whether it's new compressor time?

The A/C actually works perfectly...but I'm worried that this is going to disintegrate at some point (or catch fire as mentioned in another thread!).

[bxzx16v]

I had a xantia years ago that had its air conditioning repaired and due to it not being used previous to my ownership it seized up and the belt started smoking on the seized pulley. It was duly removed and a shorter belt fitted.

Mark

[StuY]

I have the same problem on a 2.0 HDi. If you take the aux belt off, then you can feel if there is play in the compressor pulley; there was a little bit on mine. The clutch is a doddle to take apart in situ - one nut to remove the clutch plate, then a circlip to remove the pulley. There is a good video on stripping down the Sanden SD7 clutch here: I don't have the special tool for holding the clutch plate, so I used an impact gun on the nut, while holding the clutch plate by hand - it came off instantly. Both the clutch plate and the pulley were easy to pull off by hand - no pullers needed - and this is on an 11 year old 206 that's seen its fair share of road salt.

I'm currently waiting for the replacement bearing to arrive (£11 from Estonia on eBay - it seems that more and more often I need to order bits from countries where they still repair things instead of chucking them out...). The bearing is a press fit in the pulley, but hopefully the press out/press in/staking should be reasonably straightforward. I'll have to get my local garage to do that as I don't have a press. The price of replacement bearings varies wildly. I read the (NSK) part number off the old bearing, searched for that online to get the size, then searched for the size (35x55x20 in my case) to find the best deals.

I suspect that mine could happily rattle on for a good while as it is, but it would be nice to have it properly sorted.

[StuY]

Forgot to mention: on my compressor at least, the clutch bearing is not adjustable - its a preloaded double row angular contact job. Any wear at all and it will develop play.