Hi everyone, new to the forum.

I'll start by saying that I am not handy. I just learned how to change my oil, I can replace headlights, engine/cabin filters, add coolant etc. and that's it. I have no understanding of the works of a car beyond that.

I have a 2016 CX5 with 94k that I have owned since 2018 and I love it dearly. It's had 0 issues and has been a wonderful vehicle.

I have always noticed that the amount of forced air for the conditioning of the vehicle seems less (as in, the stages from little to a lot of air don't seem to work well) but it has always gotten hot or cold when I needed it. I had begin to notice that it struggles to get cold quickly, takes 1-2 minutes of driving before you get super cold AC.

I bought a recharging kit w/ leak protection (if that even actually works) and used the gauge to see how much coolant it had. It was on the low end of "normal". I decided to add coolant and used basically the whole can - but the gauge never really seemed to jump much (which was weird). This was 1 week ago.

Yesterday I was driving it in town and the AC would go from bone-chilling cold to middle of winter hot and then back again. It would ping pong between the two the entire time I was driving. It did the same thing again this morning when I drove to work.

I recently drove a van that had the radiator fail and I experienced a similar phenomenon with the AC, but the Mazda's engine temperature light has never triggered to make me thing the engine was overheating.

Does anyone have any type of clue as to what is going on with my vehicle?

 

Could be the compressor is kicking in and out and there are multiple reasons for that.
You could spend hours trying to determine the cause.
My advice is to get a professional to check it out as they have the proper equipment to do so.

 

Welcome to the forum

My advice and recommendation is the same as what Lobstah posted

 

Hey thanks everyone.

The Mazda Dealership said that the AC is coming out at a crisp 42 degrees and that nothing is wrong with it.

I did explain that it happens intermittently and that I’ve owned it for 7 years so I’m not a crazy person

They said if it does it again in the next week to contact them and they will give me a loaner and have their manager drive it for a week to see if they can reproduce the issue.

While I’m grateful that they would be willing to do that - does anyone have ideas of what could be wrong?

 

Did you tell them what you had done to the AC?


Those kits while are user friendly more often then over charge the system which can what you describe. And if the proper pressures are not correct you could damage your AC system cost several hundred to well in the thousand dollar range to repair and correct .

As for you describing the AC to you to take longer. This is an often statement from our customers but seldom do they give all the important information and also do not account for ambient temperatures as well as what the interior and vents temperatures are when they use the AC during this time of the year in many states .

 

It is strange that we will need to set the Ac to manual for it to work properly. My experience is that after initial start up it would be cold then warm then cold then warm and then after a while maybe 30 mins into the drive it would be cold. After that it works fine? has anybody idea why this is the case?