Hi all,

I just got a 1994 Honda Accord recently, my first Honda, this winter. I had my grandparents look at it for me when I was out of town, and they said the compressor worked. When I was about to buy the car, I didn't check it visually, although when I pressed the A/C button and I felt the idle change so I figured it was fine (although this may be electronically controlled, my other car A/C idle is changed at the carburetor). In retrospect they may have been looking at what I'm guessing is an air pump, closer to the top of the engine.

Anyway, I realized it wasn't really blowing cold, and I tried to put some R-134 in (my dad does A/C work so he has tools for cars as well), but then we realized the compressor wasn't coming on. We're not sure if the compressor is dead or not. I have a couple of questions:

1) Do these compressors have low-pressure switches? How are they reset if so? Our pressures were a little low.

2) On the back of the compressor, there is a little dongle or something that has one red wire coming from the compressor to the plug, and the plug has a lot of wires going back into a main harness. However, the plug itself is not connected to anything. Is this a test plug or something, or does it need to be connected to something for the compressor to work? We didn't see any sort of plug-in for this in sight in reach of the wires, so we're not sure.

I don't have an owners manual and couldn't find a wiring diagram online. Thanks for any help!

 

There is a low pressure switch you can jump to see if that changes anything. Also a good diagram at this post:

https://honda-tech.com/zero...53253

I have a '97 (very similar to the '94 since they're in the same 4-year design range: 90-93, 94-97, 98-01) and I was able to activate the compressor using a jumper wire on the A/C relay. It's located on the condenser fan housing on the left side of the vehicle, and there are two together. One is the compressor clutch relay and the other the condensor fan relay.

I was able to put a jumper wire in the ac relay plug (w/o engine going) and hear the compressor clutch activate (holding the plug so the female receptacles are horizontal, you're jumping from top to bottom. Only one side will have an effect; the side that doesn't do anything w/ the jumper otherwise would if the relay were in place. The relays are identical; if you put the jumper on the condensor fan plug, it will just kick the fan on; at least it does on my car). Then with the engine going, I did the same thing for about 10-15 seconds. The compressor engaged and was able to feel cold air coming out of the vents.

I don't know about the dongle w/ the red wire... I'm still trying to trouble-shoot mine to figure why the dash control doesn't activate my A/C...