Ducato Cab air con failure

[Bustup15]

Driving today 22 degrees. Air vents start blowing hot air.

Air con was on and working perfectly prior to this. 2019 Dethleff Grand Alpa I

Turned on and off, auto, full auto and various temperature settings but no difference.

Parked up for a few hours and now working again.

Any ideas?

 

[gus-lopez]

If it is short of gas sometimes it will work for a while until the gas is saturated / hot & then start to struggle as it isn't getting returned cooled liquid from the condenser due to the lack of refrigerant

 

[rosalan]

Get the A/C recharged at a garage.

 

[mikebeaches]

Should be investigated under warranty, if 2019 model.

 

[Stanbrook]

Is the serpentine drive belt still there or broke/missing?
Or a failed electro-mechanical clutch in the compressor unit?
lf a diagnostic device is connected to the vehicle, a fault code will exist for low AC pressure.

Other tips from online:
Next check is that the electrical plug to the connector is connected properly. Not likely to be a problem but it is so simple......

Next you should have a look underneath the offside front corner where the compressor is located. Wear some gloves because it can be pretty dirty down there but you first need to check that the drive belt is present. If it is; next you need to get hold of the shorter of the two pipes that exit the compressor. It is very, very common for this pipe to split or break. If it does so, all of your refrigerant will be lost. The good news is that this pipe is only a couple of feet long and is easy enough to replace because it only goes to the heat exchanger (in front of the coolant radiator). The longer pipe that makes it's way to the rear of the engine bay will only fail in an accident and this is good because it is much more difficult to replace.
If the pipes appear to be in good health, the next thing to do is to get the vehicle connected to an AC service machine. The first thing that these machines do is extract the old refrigerant and weigh it. The Ducato system holds 550g of R134a gas and if the amount extracted is in the region of 300 to 350g this would indicate a very minor leak and that over time this leak has caused the pressure to drop below the working threshold for the system and having the system vacuumed and refilled should be fine and would restore the system to full operation but if the quantity of gas removed is lower than 150g this suggests a leak that must be repaired before more refrigerant can be added. It is illegal to install R134a refrigerant in a system that you suspect has a leak to the atmosphere so other methods of leak detection such as Nitrogen or tracer gasses have to be used.
In all likelihood you will have either a leaking pipe from the compressor, a leaking O ring seal at the connections to the heat exchanger or the heat exchanger is leaking itself. The early examples of the X250 (from 2006) had a very poor design of mounting bracket on the heat exchanger which was very prone to leaking. Later versions and replacements have modified mounts.
Compressor problems are very rare indeed.
Good luck, wish mine had aircon

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[Richard n Ann]

Driving today 22 degrees. Air vents start blowing hot air.

Air con was on and working perfectly prior to this. 2019 Dethleff Grand Alpa I

Turned on and off, auto, full auto and various temperature settings but no difference.

Parked up for a few hours and now working again.

Any ideas?

If it's working as normal again now whatever caused the problem wasn't a refrigerant leak, very unlikely... In my opinion anyway. Look into the control side thermostst/switches/fuses etc

 

[Bustup15]

Worked perfectly today, odd?

 

[Wellington]

Exactly the same happened to mine a coupe of weeks ago. We were away, and it was ok the next day (perhaps not quite as cold as usual, but it kept us comfortable) for the rest of the trip, but I’ll get it re-gassed now we’re back. I tried in France, and Italy but they kept trying to send me off to either that Fiat specialists or commercial vehicle people, and I didn’t have enough of either language to argue.