My wife's 02 Mini Cooper's, ~80K miles, ac when out last week. I took it to our trusted mechanic and he said the ac compressor's clutch wasn't engaging. He quoted me the dealer's price of a new ac compressor for $700! I went online and purchased a referbished ac compressor for $300 from ebay, and had it installed. I had mentioned that others (after reading about the ac problems on this forum) had problems with their radiator fan speeds. He said both fan speeds are working fine.

Still with the old ac compressor, and now with the new one, the engine makes a whining noise above 3000 RPMs. I have turned the ac off, and the whining noise goes away completely, so i know it's ac related.

Today as my wife drove away from a cold start, I could still hear her car from a fair distance, so i assume that the fan speed was on high. Could the fan speed only be operating on high? Would that have caused the ac compressor to fail? Whew! Any thoughts???

 

Anyone???

 

My A/C made a squeal or whine, sometimes both, at 3000 rpm's and higher.
The Dealer changed the belt, inspection service 1, and it mostly went away.

Perhaps it was slightly mis-aligned.

There is still a bit of a whine at 3000 or higher and it seems to be louder when the ambient temp is higher.

According to the Dealership some cars are louder than others but all the A/C units make some noise.
I tend to doubt that but have no way to know if I'm right or wrong.

The appropriate fan speeds are:

Low speed for normal cooling.
High speed when the A/C is running.

Hope this helps...

 

Thanks for your reply. I guess I've never noticed the noise before because we used to live in San Diego and moved to Phoenix a year ago. Who would have guessed that the outside temperature would make a big difference.