kenp35

I have a 2004 Accord with 151,000 miles. It is my son's car who is in college. I was doing some "proactive" repairs prior to him going back to school. I had notice what I thought were the motor mounts starting to fail. I figured I would have them looked at before he got driving a long way. His A/C was also not working about a month ago, at least not getting cold. So I recharged the system with one of the higher rated cans of freon. It worked great, plenty cold. So at the mechanic today, while he is checking the motor mounts,he notices that the condenser is leaking freon and said it would need replacing ( I didn't want to do it). We discussed the price and what could be done. Two of the mounts were going bad, but not completely. He said I should replace all three. After a long discussion, I agreed upon the 3 motor mounts and the condenser. I picked up the car when it was completed, started it, put it in reverse (the A/C was on) and the car was vibrating like it never has before. I put it in drive and it did the same thing. I do know that cars will vibrate a bit when the A/C is on and cycles, but not like this ever. After I call the manager over, he pulled it back into the service bay. They looked and it and said it is probably the compressor ( it was fine when I took it in ) going bad. And he says, " since you put the crappy A/C recharge can freon in yourself with the stop leak in it, the compressor probably went bad after I put in the good freon, the right way". He also said that some of the oil may have gotten on the outside of the system and needs to "work its way back into the system". He said that may take a couple of days, or I might have to replace the compressor.

So I went in for a couple of motor mounts, with an A/C that was working, but with a leak and now I have a vibrating car and maybe need a new compressor. So what happened that the car vibrates hard in reverse and drive now and it didn't before it got fixed? Is he giving me a line of BS? Could the compressor just go bad because he put in new freon? The car doesn't vibrate when the A/C is off.

holmesnmanny

the compressor isn't the issue, if he used aftermarket mounts then the issue could be the mounts, if he used Honda OEM mounts then the issue is likely there is a sequence to torquing down mounts so it doesn't vibrate

normally replacing one mount won't require you to do the proper mount torque sequence but when you do 3 or more then you might need to torque in the correct sequence using the correct torque procedure to prevent vibrations