Toyota Corolla LE, carefully maintained. New a/c 2 years ago, at 56,0000 miles. St Louis this summer at 107 degrees, & a/c decides to cool only at will. Its will, not mine. warm air blows for a little while, then cooling resumes. ? First shop added freon, gave an estimate of $865 to take dashboard apart & fix it. Second shop cleaned evaporator drain, replaced cabin filter, said it should be OK. Nope. After the initial visit to shop #1 the CD player and the radio no longer worked at all (they had mentioned I might have trouble after they checked it all out).
I really do not want to put this much into the car, even tho’ it has only 81,000miles . But I think I can’t sell it without radio, CD player, and erratic air. My omniscient brother says go to Best Buy & put in a better radio/CD player, less than $200. I can live with the a/c working 80% of the time—winter’s coming. Opinions???
I fail to see how adding freon to the AC would make the radio not work unless they got under the dash for another reason. If they did that, then they probably forgot to plug the radio back in or they cut the wires. Either way, you don’t need a new radio unless you just want one.
If they think the problem is in the evaporator, then the dashboard has to be completely disassembled and removed to get at it, and I mean the whole thing. Same for the heater core.
FYI, you might just have a compressor relay going bad, not uncommon on these, about a $15 part at Advanced Auto Parts, $115 from dealer, not available at AutoZone.
I think @Keith might be on to something. That relay could very well be the cause of your sweating.
Why did they decide they want to tear into your dashboard?
They may have disconnected power to the radio in accessing the drain. Does it display an error msg? No mention of the year of this car so hard to know what exactly it will do under those conditions.
First shop added freon, gave an estimate of $865 to take dashboard apart & fix it
Why would they add freon and then suggest taking the dash apart? If you want quality advice, you need to take the time to fill in some of the blanks…