We went out to see my daughter at school yesterday. I had changed the AC clutch about a month ago with a $50 ebay replacment, and the AC was working when she went back to school. She hadn't really needed it and doesn't drive much while at school, but she discovered this week with our whacky weather that it's not working again. Bugger.
So I took a quick peek in the parking lot while the wind kept blowing corn stalks at me. The AC fuse was blown; changed it with the spare in the fuse box, it cycled on a few times, then popped the fuse again. I didn't have anything to troubleshoot with.
I'm thinking defective cheap coil that pulls too much current? Not pleased, as this was a pretty miserable job due to access constraints.
Cheap coil sounds like a plausible problem source, especially if it didn't blow fuses before you changed it. A OEM Honda clutch kit from Honda dealer was as much as an OEM new Denso compressor via Rock Auto with a new clutch when my '06 had a clutch problem, so I chose to go the route of a new compressor. Only after the fact did I learn that the original clutch has a shim that can be removed to get the air gap back within spec after the pieces wear. So, if you still have the original parts and only the air gap was wrong, you might be able to reinstall them. Sucky job, but do-able with enough patience.
Kind of my line of thought as well; the original coil must have had an internal break or something; no continuity. This failed differently like an internal short. I didn't want to get into messing with opening up the system; trying to keep it going on the cheap as best I can.
So I did abit of searching around. Not much availability of clutches from reputable places; lots of $50 ones, many of which have 1-2 reviews on Amazon and all have the same pictures. As you said, the OEM clutch is 317 not including the coil. However, the coil alone is 100, which is doable since the clutch currently in the car has about 200 miles on it, if that.
She'll be home this weekend; I'll take a better look at it then before pulling the trigger; but leaning towards swapping the coil alone over Thanksgiving while the car will be home. I at least know the procedure now and all the fasteners have been loosened up so it should go faster.
And yes the shim trick is a good one to know, it worked on an older Civic before - I think someone on here mentioned it.
Today I finally got time to look into this problem again. Never got time over Thanksgiving because she was out seeing friends and refuses to drive any of the other 4 cars available at home.
I sprung for a real Sanden coil from HondaPartsNow. It came with actual instructions, better qualitiy circlips, and a new clamp for the wiring:
So the autopsy shows that I effed up and didn't get the circlip holding the coil to the compressor seated well enough. It apparently popped off and the coil was loose inside the pulley. Bugger.
Getting the replacement to seat properly was a pain as well. I had to unbolt all four compressor bolts and jockey the compressor around to get an angle to get the circlip pliers in. There are a couple YT videos of the procedure.
So after a couple hours of miserable wrestling in confined spaces, the AC works again, which was helpful with today's NeOhio season of 'London' . At least it went much faster today having done the job once before...
Next Civic project: on to find a hydraulic right motor mount. The original has deflated enough that there's a ridiculous amount of vibration and noise, bad enough that the right fender and cowl are vibrating at high idle.
On the fun side, I'm going to get her an Atoto S7 head unit, which has wireless Android Auto and Apple CarPlay, to drop in next long weekend she's home. I know somewhere back in Oct. we had a thread discussing options for wireless ACP/AA but I can't find it now. They sell on Amazon; the 7" double din is like 240.
I replaced all four mounts on my 2006 at 160k with Beck Arnley made parts from RockAuto. The Honda ones were way too expensive. So far, so good 20k miles later ... much better than the worn out OEM mounts. None were hydraulic on the 2006, though.
Agreed on the Honda OEM prices. I was under abit of a time crunch as my dtr returns to school Sunday and I dont like doing work and sending the car 120 miles away without some shakedown miles first.
I found an Advance Auto that was open today and got an Anchor brand (also apparently the coupe and sedan have different part numbers?) mount for 155.
Despite some reviews mentioning different thread pitch and misaligned holes, it went right in, well mostly...
I still am amazed by the tight quarters under the hood in this thing. Its like a 3d tetris game to get anything in or out.
Mission accomplished, back to being a reasonably quiet appliance!
