Thanks to Bob H, Wee Nemo and deaddog I’ve been able to put together this How To.
After having already replaced my compressor relay, checking all the fuses and the condenser fan and resetting the ECU (remove negative battery terminal for 10 minutes) my next port of call was the compressor clutch plate.
Before you start check those first, Climate Control on Wiki is here:
2006+ Honda Civic Forum
Related threads on this issue:
AC/Heater - Air Conditioning
AC/Heater - Climate control problem - Compressor not...
If you’re getting heat related symptoms of intermittent AC operation (at motorway speed OK but then in traffic and/or on hot sunny days it stops and starts working) then this could be the fix you need without the expensive diagnostics and labour charges.
The AC compressor is driven by an electromagnetic clutch on the lowest pulley on the left hand side as you look into the engine bay facing the windscreen. It’s quite hard to see and best to use a torch. The clutch plate will spin when engaged (working on faulty units when cold) and will be still when disengaged.
If it cycles off without being switched off then you can look under the bonnet to see if the clutch plate is spinning, if it isn’t and you have the AC switched on then this could be the problem.
I’m no engineer and would rate myself as an expert novice, so if you’re confident at taking things apart and putting them back together then this is easily achievable. No gas release or anything like that is required.
First off you need to get under the car, I used ramps, and axle stands are fine but as always never work under your car with only the jack holding it up. Once it’s up on the ramps you need to remove the undertray.
See Pic 1
For this you’ll need a 10mm socket to get the 4 no bolts that are around the circular hole you can see in the photo. The rest is held by clips a few under the bumper, 2 in each arch and a few more at the back on each side, careful not to lose any clips here and be gentle with the bolts as I snapped one in the thread trying to remove it too quickly.
See Pics 2 and 3 (the extra timber around the car and ramps was my 6 year old ‘helping’ and this isn’t absolutely necessary but the Civinfo sticker under the bonnet is proven to bring you good luck)
Now this is complete you will have a good view of the clutch plate due to the light around it. Before you go any further remove the negative terminal from the battery.
Now it’s worth saying now that if you want really east access to the compressor then you could remove the washer bottle but that’s quite a bit of work so I struggled on without doing so, however if you want to this then follow this thread may be useful to you:
Windscreen - Windscreen Washers Blocked Up
Once you are underneath the car the compressor pulley and clutch plate will look like this. The gap between the clutch plate and the pulley should be within 0.35mm and 0.65mm, you will need some feeler gauges to check the gap here, mine was >1mm:
See pic s 4 and 5
That’s the OSR corner you can see on the right, the white bit is the washer bottle, the spanner is hanging off the retaining nut and the bar is what I have used to stop the clutch plate from moving as I use the 14mm ring spanner to loosen the nut holding the clutch plate in place.
There isn’t enough room with the washer bottle in place to get a socket in there or a proper AC clutch tool hence my improvised method. Here’s a picture of what the outward face of the plate you need to keep still looks like as well as showing how I modified a steel tube to hold it in place:
See pic 6
This is how the rod looked from the exterior, simple really the rod holds part of the plate and is wedged between it and the ground allowing you to loosen the retaining bolt. Deaddog used a different method but this worked for me:
See pic 7
Once I had the plate off I removed the existing shim which seemed rather thick. Now some people have just replaced the plate and measured the gap and found it to be within tolerance however I wouldn’t start this job off without having spare shims of smaller thickness in hand. Below is the inside of the clutch plate and the offending shim (I know that’s a lot of work to change a washer):
See pic 8
Compressor with clutch plate removed (pic 9)
Honda sell a shim kit for this part and it costs £3.99 or something but when I called there was a 7 week wait as there were none in the UK or Europe. The Honda shim is a 10mmx14mm (that’s 10mm internal diameter x 14mm external diameter).
As I couldn’t get a hold of the Honda shim kit I resorted to eBay and bought a set of shims of various thickness that were 10mmX12mm, I’m not recommending this to anyone as I’m not sure if they will stand the test of time (3months so far and all OK), they are made for RC cars, but this is what I used:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Shim-Set-...0pc-ea-Tamiya-etc-/271237540150#ht_1319wt_997
See pic 10
Now you just complete the process in reverse. Using the smaller shims as necessary, put the plate back on the compressor and measure the gap between the pulley and plate with feeler gauges, once you are between 0.35mm and 0.65mm then you have almost completed the task.
You will need to use the rod or other improvised method to tighten the retaining nut (this should be torque set but I don’t fancy you getting a torque wrench in there). Here’s a close up of what I used, I made 2 vertical cuts with a hack saw down the tube, then cut down into the tube from each side until I met he bottom of each vertical cut, finally I used the open end of my spanner to roll the sides out into a slight V shape so that the circular parts of the clutch plate would locate in the tube without slipping:
See pic 11
Now you’re all assembled you need to re-connect the battery terminal and start the engine (make sure you’ve not left any tools anywhere in there though). You can then check that the clutch engages and disengages as it should do when switched on and off. If it won’t disengage then it’s likely the gap between plate and pulley is too small and you will need to repeat the process and either replace the shim or add another to increase the gap.
Here is a link I found to US based Honda Jazz forum, the compressor overhaul instructions are as above:
A/C Compressor Clutch Overhaul (With A/C)
Once you have the gap within tolerance and the clutch engaging and disengaging then you just need to put it all back together and hope it has worked. It’s not certain that this will fix it but well worth a couple of hours of your life as others have proven that this can be all that is needed to fix your AC.
After having already replaced my compressor relay, checking all the fuses and the condenser fan and resetting the ECU (remove negative battery terminal for 10 minutes) my next port of call was the compressor clutch plate.
Before you start check those first, Climate Control on Wiki is here:
2006+ Honda Civic Forum
Related threads on this issue:
AC/Heater - Air Conditioning
AC/Heater - Climate control problem - Compressor not...
If you’re getting heat related symptoms of intermittent AC operation (at motorway speed OK but then in traffic and/or on hot sunny days it stops and starts working) then this could be the fix you need without the expensive diagnostics and labour charges.
The AC compressor is driven by an electromagnetic clutch on the lowest pulley on the left hand side as you look into the engine bay facing the windscreen. It’s quite hard to see and best to use a torch. The clutch plate will spin when engaged (working on faulty units when cold) and will be still when disengaged.
If it cycles off without being switched off then you can look under the bonnet to see if the clutch plate is spinning, if it isn’t and you have the AC switched on then this could be the problem.
I’m no engineer and would rate myself as an expert novice, so if you’re confident at taking things apart and putting them back together then this is easily achievable. No gas release or anything like that is required.
First off you need to get under the car, I used ramps, and axle stands are fine but as always never work under your car with only the jack holding it up. Once it’s up on the ramps you need to remove the undertray.
See Pic 1
For this you’ll need a 10mm socket to get the 4 no bolts that are around the circular hole you can see in the photo. The rest is held by clips a few under the bumper, 2 in each arch and a few more at the back on each side, careful not to lose any clips here and be gentle with the bolts as I snapped one in the thread trying to remove it too quickly.
See Pics 2 and 3 (the extra timber around the car and ramps was my 6 year old ‘helping’ and this isn’t absolutely necessary but the Civinfo sticker under the bonnet is proven to bring you good luck)
Now this is complete you will have a good view of the clutch plate due to the light around it. Before you go any further remove the negative terminal from the battery.
Now it’s worth saying now that if you want really east access to the compressor then you could remove the washer bottle but that’s quite a bit of work so I struggled on without doing so, however if you want to this then follow this thread may be useful to you:
Windscreen - Windscreen Washers Blocked Up
Once you are underneath the car the compressor pulley and clutch plate will look like this. The gap between the clutch plate and the pulley should be within 0.35mm and 0.65mm, you will need some feeler gauges to check the gap here, mine was >1mm:
See pic s 4 and 5
That’s the OSR corner you can see on the right, the white bit is the washer bottle, the spanner is hanging off the retaining nut and the bar is what I have used to stop the clutch plate from moving as I use the 14mm ring spanner to loosen the nut holding the clutch plate in place.
There isn’t enough room with the washer bottle in place to get a socket in there or a proper AC clutch tool hence my improvised method. Here’s a picture of what the outward face of the plate you need to keep still looks like as well as showing how I modified a steel tube to hold it in place:
See pic 6
This is how the rod looked from the exterior, simple really the rod holds part of the plate and is wedged between it and the ground allowing you to loosen the retaining bolt. Deaddog used a different method but this worked for me:
See pic 7
Once I had the plate off I removed the existing shim which seemed rather thick. Now some people have just replaced the plate and measured the gap and found it to be within tolerance however I wouldn’t start this job off without having spare shims of smaller thickness in hand. Below is the inside of the clutch plate and the offending shim (I know that’s a lot of work to change a washer):
See pic 8
Compressor with clutch plate removed (pic 9)
Honda sell a shim kit for this part and it costs £3.99 or something but when I called there was a 7 week wait as there were none in the UK or Europe. The Honda shim is a 10mmx14mm (that’s 10mm internal diameter x 14mm external diameter).
As I couldn’t get a hold of the Honda shim kit I resorted to eBay and bought a set of shims of various thickness that were 10mmX12mm, I’m not recommending this to anyone as I’m not sure if they will stand the test of time (3months so far and all OK), they are made for RC cars, but this is what I used:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Shim-Set-...0pc-ea-Tamiya-etc-/271237540150#ht_1319wt_997
See pic 10
Now you just complete the process in reverse. Using the smaller shims as necessary, put the plate back on the compressor and measure the gap between the pulley and plate with feeler gauges, once you are between 0.35mm and 0.65mm then you have almost completed the task.
You will need to use the rod or other improvised method to tighten the retaining nut (this should be torque set but I don’t fancy you getting a torque wrench in there). Here’s a close up of what I used, I made 2 vertical cuts with a hack saw down the tube, then cut down into the tube from each side until I met he bottom of each vertical cut, finally I used the open end of my spanner to roll the sides out into a slight V shape so that the circular parts of the clutch plate would locate in the tube without slipping:
See pic 11
Now you’re all assembled you need to re-connect the battery terminal and start the engine (make sure you’ve not left any tools anywhere in there though). You can then check that the clutch engages and disengages as it should do when switched on and off. If it won’t disengage then it’s likely the gap between plate and pulley is too small and you will need to repeat the process and either replace the shim or add another to increase the gap.
Here is a link I found to US based Honda Jazz forum, the compressor overhaul instructions are as above:
A/C Compressor Clutch Overhaul (With A/C)
Once you have the gap within tolerance and the clutch engaging and disengaging then you just need to put it all back together and hope it has worked. It’s not certain that this will fix it but well worth a couple of hours of your life as others have proven that this can be all that is needed to fix your AC.