Hello. 2005 R53. The car has developed the common, unpleasant, AC odor where everyone says to check the drain tube underneath.
I ran the car with the air blasting for quite some time. No water was draining, must be plugged.
went under the car and could feel a lot of air blowing out of the drain tube. Poked around with a screwdriver nothing came out.
So, it would appear the condenser is not draining and the drain tube doesn't appear to be plugged either... what the heck could that mean?
Thanks for any help you can offer

 

Is the carpet wet?

 

No moisture on the carpet

 

You don't say where you live for what climate you are in. The water draining from the climate box while the A/C compressor is running is from the dehumidifying characteristic of the A/C system. If the outside air is pretty dry, there will be little to no water draining from your A/C system because there is not much water vapor in the air to condense into water.

Second, make sure your A/C compressor is running while you are testing. If it is not, then there will be no condensation to drain.

 

I'm in Wisconsin. I did have the car in the garage, AC blowing ice cold for 20 to 30 minutes.
the weather outside was in the 60s and raining off and on.
I was wondering if the weather was a factor. Maybe if it was 70 or 80 out might have brought different results.
Perhaps my brain doesn't fully understand an AC system, it just likes little cars that go fast 😅

 

Water comes from condensation on the evaporator as it is colder than ambient air. Dew point would be the thing to understand here (a function of humidity and temps and maybe air pressure). **** I don’t remember

if you put a glass of ice water in your garage does it sweat? I know it does here

 

Probably not it but would recommend changing the cabin filter, they can get nasty over time.
Also
Would recommend go at it with a longer zip tie or piece of weed wacker string to make sure you get all the way up without damaging anything. Also while you're thinking about it make sure your sunroof drains are clear.

 

Yeah, information on the sunroof drains was coming up when I was looking this up.
I'll definitely be addressing that too

 

Well, here's the update.
I came to the conclusion that the drain tube wasn't clogged. I could definitely feel air blowing out of it when running, the cool temperature was probably the reason for no condensation. So, I opted to just clean the condenser, as described in another post.

I purchased a foaming cleaner called AC-Safe from Home Depot. This product was mentioned in an older "how to" post from David S.
I sprayed it into both sides of the condenser housing box thing and let it drain into a pan under the car. At one point, I even clamped the drain tube shut to hold the cleaner in for a bit.
I let the AC run for a while, in all it's lemony-fresh glory. There were even some chunks of mysterious black nasty floating in the catch pan after the cleaning.
Unfortunately, I haven't been able to drive around with the AC blasting. In my area of Wisconsin, it was literally 71 degrees yesterday and 33 degrees today.
I'm recommending AC-Safe for anyone needing to clean up their AC.