K&N vs. My Jeep's Air Conditioning

Last year, the AC in my Jeep stopped working. There was a leak somewhere in the system. I had it diagnosed by a shop which concluded that the condenser needed to be replaced. This is about an $1100 job on the TJ Wrangler, mostly because of labor. The dash has to be pretty much entirely disassembled, everything fixed and replaced, and then the dash is put back together. All this is said to take the pros several hours to accomplish.

Because I prefer fresh air, and smelling the outside smells (preferably good ones!), and consider the temperature to be part of the experience on a drive, I don’t often use the AC. I don’t like feeling like I’m in a hermetically-sealed bubble, looking out on new places, rather than being part of them, or at least being exposed to them. Sure, I’ve made exceptions when eating the dust on trails for hours on hot days, or when the temperatures have been in the 90-100° range for a week straight, but overall I prefer my air to be the real thing.

So when presented with the expensive repair, I opted against further mangling my already crippled budget.

I didn’t think much more about it until another geocacher mentioned that he’d had the same problem, but was able to fix his AC by adding some canned replacement R134 gas, which included some leak sealer as well. At twenty bucks a can, and with high temperatures and the air filled with California wildfire particles, I figured it was worth a shot.

I carefully read the instructions and consulted the enormous Chrysler service manual. I started filling the system but almost immediately heard a leak, and spotted green goo (the sealant, I assume) spraying on the heat shield of my K&N air intake. The shield was attached properly, but pulling it back slightly revealed an obvious problem:

The upper part of the solid aluminum tube here comes off the AC compressor manifold. It is normally cylindrical in shape, as one would expect from a tube. But you can see on the right side of this one that there is a very vertical, perfectly straight line there. I was shocked, but what had happened was quite clear: the tube and the K&N heat shield (on the right) had rubbed together so much that the softer aluminum tube had been ground down quite a lot. Eventually, a hole was created, and fwooooosh! Out went all the AC gas.

If you have a TJ with AC, and a K&N “FIPK” air intake, I suggest that you check for similar damage, and that you take preventive measures as necessary to prevent a similar fate to your AC system.

My Jeep shop is going to let me know how much a replacement AC manifold runs. There’s no guarantee that it’s the only thing wrong with my AC system, but it’s definitely very broken and it will be a lot less than $1100 to correct.

The rubber seal on top of the K&N heat shield is also now detaching. I’m going to contact K&N about that, and I’ll probably mention this little issue to them to see what they say. I’ll report back on what they tell me.