Good morning!

Here's my situation. I own a 97 CRV with 102,000+ miles. I
recently turned on my A/C and, as soon as doing so, began to hear a
noise similar to the blades of a fan hitting against some object.
This prompted me to check the radiator fan to see if this was the
case but no object could be found. When I turn off the A/C the
noise disappears. The noise is coming from the area of the A/C
unit, and gets louder and faster when I step on the accelerator. It
does provide cold air when activated but the noise bothers me.
While cooling isn't a big deal now since summer is over, the A/C
does come in handy for defogging. Has anybody else had this
happen? Am I looking at a new compressor? What are we roughly
talking about for a repair bill? I appreciate your help.

Joe

I have a 98 that had this same problem at just under 40 k, very similar problem , one day it got MUCH worse and i drove it straight to the dealer and called the service rep out to look at it. He started the car, turned on the a/c and BOOM it blew up right in front of him and me. He told me that it would all be covered since i had an extended warranty ( thank god) i get it back about 3 days later and they hand me a bill for something like $85 for some b.s. i raise hell for ever and a day and say screw it and just pay the bill. Then i start going after anyone and everyone i can possibly go after and after 6 weeks i finally get them to refund the $85 back to me. Long story short the compressor blew a hole in it the size of a quarter, the total bill was close to $1500. I am not the only person that had this problem with there a/c or so i have read on this list. i believe the crv has a problem with the 1st gen a/c system. SO far i have yet to have anymore trouble with a/c but i feel the a/c system on the crv is the worst i have ever seen on any vehicle i have ever seen. I don't have the time right now to explain all this in detail or if you even want to hear any of it, if you do feel free to email me.

Hi Joe,

I have a 98 with slightly less than 98,000m on it. This summer the air
conditioner gradually, over the period of about a week, lost its
ability to cool. This happened before and was due to a leak. That time,
the repair was around $250 for them to remove the coolant, fix the leak
and recharge the system.

I was expecting the same this time. However, the dealer called and said
they had some good new and some bad news. The bad news was the
compressor was noisy and needed replacing...but the good news was it is
covered. I didn't buy an extended warranty, but since I bought and had
the car serviced there, it's automatically covered by a 100,000m, 7
year major parts warranty provided by that dealership. What a deal.

The bill was for $743, but all I paid was $20 for the loaner car.
Here's the breakdown of the bill:

$104 labor
$350 compressor
$130 clutch
$54 coil
$40 system test
$40 evacuate and recharge
$25 R134A refrigerant

Good luck with it.

Karl