This characteristic noise is triggered in your car as soon as you activate the air conditioning. Here’s how to recognize it and get rid of it.
Summer is fast approaching and with it its temperatures which blithely exceed 30 degrees. Sometimes difficult to endure outdoors, temperatures can easily reach 40 degrees in the cabin of a vehicle that has been in the sun for a long time and quickly become unbearable. Fortunately, air conditioning exists! When it’s hot outside, the reflex when getting into the car is to put the air conditioning on to cool the interior of our vehicle. While this air-cooling system is more efficient and less noisy than rolling down the windows (especially on the highway!), it’s still prone to breakdowns and that can quickly become very annoying.
As with brakes, tires or the engine, air conditioning maintenance is essential for its proper functioning. But it sometimes happens that a noise is heard when you press the small “A/C” (air conditioning) button on the dashboard, which is standard today in almost all cars on the road. . Not very noisy but quite haunting, it is a noise whose intensity varies according to engine speed. Like any abnormal noise in a car, it challenges and worries. It must be said that these noises are often the consequence of a more or less serious malfunction and a (expensive) trip to the garage.
Using the air conditioning in a car couldn’t be simpler: just press a button and adjust the desired temperature most often using a small dial. But its mechanism is much more complex. In addition to the lack of cold diffused and the fog which appears on the windscreen, the persistence of a metallic noise when the air conditioning is activated is one of the symptoms which should alert you to the faulty operation of your air conditioner. Its origin is usually in the compressor, the essential part of the air conditioning system that is located under the hood.
When that little metallic sound travels through the vehicle when the A/C is on, it means your A/C compressor has had enough life – it has an average lifespan of 10 years – and needs to be replaced. A metallic noise is thus the first signal to monitor… before the air conditioning failure. Bad news, this replacement is quite expensive: count around 400 euros for a new compressor. This small room is nevertheless essential to bring you fresh air… without preventing you from listening to music quietly or having to speak louder to drown out that noise during a discussion between passengers.
