10/09/2026
BMW 4 Series air con not cooling a week after a refrigerant refill.
The owner brought the car straight to us. For an air con, a week is very fast. Refrigerant is not fuel and nothing burns it off — a sealed circuit is built to hold its charge for years and loses only a trace through hoses and seals. If the cold disappears that fast, nothing was used up. It went out through a hole.
Finding that hole meant going deep. The evaporator is the one part of the circuit you cannot reach with the car together: it sits inside the heater box, behind the dashboard. Vents, trim, console and glovebox came out first, then the panel itself, lifted off the cross beam.
We put the part under air pressure and lowered it into a tray of water. A steady line of bubbles came up from one spot on the core. There was the leak.
A new evaporator went in, everything went back together, and the system was recharged on the machine. The fault that was letting the refrigerant out is no longer in this car.
Worth knowing if you drive here: the oil that lubricates the compressor travels round the circuit with the refrigerant, so a leak drains that oil too, and the compressor is what suffers first.
An air con job is not only a refill. The leak comes first.
Air con blowing warm again? Bring the car in and we’ll find the leak.
📍 ZenGarage — Phuket Town (Talat Nuea)
💬 WhatsApp / LINE: +66 64 870 0512
