While stopped or at slow idle (drive-throughs, backing up,etc..) my A/C causes my DD Civic's idle to drop low and go up very quickly until I either turn off the A/C real quick, give it some gas (sometimes it still continues, sometimes it goes away until the next stop).

You can hear the condenser I guess kicking on and off, on and off very quickly, which is what is causing the weird idle. Any ideas as to what can/should be done?

Along with this, the air is only cool (not cold) while I'm actually driving. And, I can tell the difference in power when the condenser kicks on and off. It's a dramatic loss of power such as merging. I know that the A/C being on causes a little loss, but not like this.

A/C systems aren't my area of expertise.

If it makes a difference, car was in a wreck 4+ years ago, so the A/C had to be fixed. I don't recall what was actually done, but it was repaired and charged.

I apologize if my description of the problem is too vague, or hard to understand. Car is auto, so I don't know how low the RPM's are dipping,either.

-Thanks for taking the time to read and I hope to get this taken care of soon. There have already been several 100*+ days here. Luckily I can ride my CBR and get some breeze!

 

Any ideas as to what I can check/look for?

 

It might be that the compressor is going out. If the compressor is going out usually there is metal to metal inside the compressor, this puts a bigger strain on the engine since it's not spinning easily like it should, hence the drop in rpms. I don't really know how you would check if that's the case besides just taking the compressor off and looking inside. Although if it's started to wear like that it might be too late, you might just need a new compressor.

One thing you can try is adding more oil. Go to walmart or any auto parts store and get a recharge kit with oil in it, add that and see if it helps.