during the summer i pretty much never shut off my a/c. when i get home i just turn off my truck therefore when i go somewhere next i just start it and the ac is already on. is this bad?

reason i ask is my wife shuts off her a/c right before she turns the ignition off and she thinks this is better for the car in some way. now i know that she is infinitely brighter than me and i would NEVER question her on most matters but on this one i still wonder ( i know i shouldn't really be thinking and that could get me into a lot of trouble but even a dumb animal lifts his head now and then and ponders the meaning of it all dontcha think) what the reason could be and maybe i should modify my little routine? what do you all think?

 

Naw. Just might wear componets prematurly but I basically do the same thing.

 

i cant beleive it would make much difference, you figure if you have it in defrost its cycling ac anyway. by the way my wife allways shuts everything off also.

 

My wife leaves everything on!

 

my wife turns me on...

 

My thinking is this, and I could be wrong, but back in the days before cars were computerized (for lack of a better term), it was common practice to turn the AC off when you turned off the car. It was to keep unnecessary drag on the engine, battery, etc. when you started it, since the compressor would immediately be on when you cranked the engine. With modern vehicles, the compressor doesn't come on immediately, so it's not really an issue anymore. A lot of people got in the habit of turning it off, so it's just second nature to still do it.

 

You do not have to turn anything off other than the ignition key. There was a time on some models where the blower fan would stay on for a short time after ignition off to help a problem with moldy smell coming from the a/c, I remember Ford actually sent out a recall to install a delay relay to the blower fan, It was the Contour/Mystique models.

The final fix was to replace the entire a/c plenum with a new design.

Warranty paid 4 hrs for the entire job and the first few ate our lunch but as time went by and experience gained I got the job down to an hour and a half start to finish.

There was also a customer complaint of a thud on start up when the a/c was left on and vehicle shut down on some of the F-150's and other models where they recommended shutting the a/c off first to alleviate the issue that was later fixed with an a/c line re-route away from the firewall.



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