Just before Holy Week, the car overheated because the radiator fan wasn’t automatically activating. The aircon also died. My theory was that the overheat resulted in the refrigerant to go hot, over pressured, and got vented out by some pressure relief valve. I direct-connected the radiator fan so that it’s always on. Not a long-term solution as this will shorten the life of the fans. I also made do without air conditioning. Or rather Michelle did.
Today, I visited Fusion R and they confirmed that the radiator fan wasn’t working properly because the radiator fan temperature switch connector was loose due to a broken clip. They tried looking for a replacement but couldn’t find any. So what they did was remove the old temperature sensor and connector and replaced them with ones from a Subaru. Total cost P3000 for the Subaru stuff and labor. Ouch! At least the car has a little bit of Subaru genes now :P
But it wasn’t over yet. Next, I went to the aircon shop. They said everything seems okay, there are no visible signs of a leak. So they’ll just recharge the refrigerant and observe if there’s a leak. Bad decision. In just a few minutes the refrigerant was gone again. There was definitely a leak.
They pulled down the evaporator and the pipings to look for it and sure enough there was a huge one in the piping near the radiator. The radiator had somehow sawed a hole on it. They brazed the leak shut, reinstalled everything, and recharged again. Total cost P950 for the initial recharge and P2650 for the pulldown and repair. Ouch again!
It became clear what happened: The radiator abraded the aircon piping until it finally blew venting out refrigerant. The aircon system detected the low level of refrigerant and shut down as a failsafe. This means the radiator fan and auxiliary fan didn’t spin as they usually do when the aircon switch is on. Since the radiator temp switch wasn’t working properly, the radiator fan didn’t turn on and the engine overheated.