W124 climate control

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cornershop

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Dec 29, 2011
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166
Location
North London
Car
560 SEC, e320 Coupe, Audi S8 D2, 87 Porsche 911
Folks, I may be viewing a 95 c124 today, which has auto climate control fitted.

Is this generally reliable or to be avoided in favour of an air con equipped car.

A quick google suggests ACC is much more complex and more labour involved in problem diagnosis?

Thanks all
 
It was a very expensive option in the UK. I have not heard that its troublesome but there are more sensors to go wrong. One drawback is that I think you can only set one temperature for the whole car rather than each side individually
 
I think the single temp thing would be OK, even though my s8 allows individual temp settings, it's not a deal breaker. The complexity concerns me more, especially as I've read some issues need the dash removing
 
I have it on one of mine and I'll always have it instead of standard aircon
 
The dash removal thing can apply to the dual zone set up too if you're unlucky enough, with automatic climate all the air direction flaps etc are controlled with leccy witches & vacuum instead of manually with cables. Cables have occasionally been known to break/come unclipped at the heater end and the fresh/recirculated air switch uses leccy/vacuum on both set ups...
As with virtually any car the heater matrix and AC evaporator are buried deep in the dash and beyond a PITA to get at if one or both spring a leak

Off the top of my head the most common heater problems apply to both set ups... dead/knackered blower motors (accessed from the engine bay under the wiper), interior air temp sampling fan (lives in the dash but not a dash out job, fed from a vent in the interior light) and stuck duo valves except it's just one monovalve with automatic climate

I've never owned an example with automatic climate but i'd imagine if i did it'd need even less fiddling with, about the only the settings on mine that need tweaking is air direction and fan speed for stuff like demisiting. Haven't tweaked the temp setting in eons as it heats or cools as needed
 
Ours has normal manual AC. The dash has now been out four times to replace broken cables to the flaps. Only had to pay once fortunately
 
One of the issues with the earlier MB climate control was the complex vacuum system for moving the flaps would go wrong and it was a nightmare to fix - some owners bodge a simple override so they can get basic heat and cold settings at will, bypassing the ACC's brain.
I would imagine the later version of this ACC relied more on electronics rather than vacuum so would be much more reliable. It was listed as a £2800 option (normal a/c was £2000) so is a very rare option in the UK.

Having said that you can test to see if it works by simply setting the temp and pressing 'auto'. The whole point is that you don't need to adjust the settings as on a manual system so if it's a hot day cold air should blast through the vents and then gradually quieten down as the temp goes down. If it is a cold day warm air should initially come through the foot and windscreen vents.
 

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