Crobran

My compressor was making intermittent noise, though still blowing cold air. Sometimes it would make noise when the compressor was engaged, and other times when it wasn't. I noticed a lot of wobbling in the pulley, and then one day the clutch fell off.

Looking more closely, it was obvious that the bearing was completely shot. Today I removed the pulley, but I don't know enough about this kind of thing to know if this could all be from a bad bearing or if the compressor itself is bad. I can turn the shaft without much resistance - too much resistance for me to turn it by hand, but not too much to turn it easily with some pliers.

I've attached some pictures. It appears that the splines on the shaft are worn down. I don't know if there should be splines on the inside of the clutch plate, but there aren't. I've attached a wider angle picture as well to find out if anyone sees any other obvious problems that I don't.

So again, my question is: Can I replace just the pulley or bearing, or does it look like I need to replace the whole compressor?

ezone

Sounds like the center nut was loose for a while and let the splines rattle against each other until they sheared all the high points off and it no longer locks to the shaft.

If a good clutch plate (a good used one would be fine for checking this) can't engage what's left of the splines to turn the shaft, you're gonna need a compressor.....and your pic looks like those splines are trashed.

If this is a 6th gen, check for bearing noise in the adjuster pulley too, they frequently went bad.


A couple pics of AC parts for comparison (this was from an 8th gen but that doesn't really matter), these pics may be huge if you click on them for details... You can see how much larger the good splines are on the compressor shaft, and you can see the sharp points in the splines in each