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A/C blows hot air for first 5 minutes; then goes to cold


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My 2015 Edge Sport (Tuxedo Black!) sits outside in the hot sun here all day, usually in temps of 80 to 100 degrees. Most days, when I first leave the house, the car is of course VERY hot (what with it being black and all)... and the A/C blows nothing but very hot air, at least until I've been driving for about 5 minutes or so, then it suddenly starts blowing cold air. My thought was that all the air ducts are very hot from sitting in the sun, but still, blowing nothing but hot air for the first few minutes of driving (when the setting is on LO) doesn't seem right to me.

 

When I first start the car and engage the A/C, I can hear the compressor immediately kick on... but, I don't know if the fan is also supposed to kick on at the same time (even if the engine is cold)? I do not recall ever hearing the fan kick on when the engine is cold and the A/C is first turned on (even though it is hot outside).

 

Has anybody had this issue yet? I am tempted to take it to the dealer, but I want to know if this symptom is indicative of a real problem or not, before I waste my time at the dealers (I suspect they'll just run it for a few minutes and put a thermometer in the vents, then tell me "it got cold so it must be OK"... which wouldn't address the fact that I get fried in my hot car for the first 5 minutes).

 

 

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Check to see if your condenser is clogged (it's the radiator looking thing at the front of the car). In order for the refrigerant to get cold, there has to be good airflow through the condenser.

 

I believe the fan should turn on as soon as you turn on the ac. (Mine does).

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Hi, and thanks for your input. My Edge only has 4800 miles on it, and it's a California car, so there wouldn't be any clogging issue evident. Additionally, the front grille shutters have always opened shortly after starting, so I don't believe that has anything to do with the problem.

 

I just went out and started-up the car again; it's been sitting in 95-degree heat this afternoon, after having last been driven about 5 hours ago. Both the fan and the compressor came on immediately, and it started blowing cold air immediately as well.

 

In thinking about it, the problem seems to make itself known more when it's run for the very first time in any given day... In fact, in between running errands today, every time I started the car, the air would blow cold (other than that very first start of the day).

 

I will check it again tomorrow, when the engine is truly "cold", to see if that makes any difference, and report in...

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OK, so I went outside mid-morning today (temp was about 70 degrees) and started the car for the first time and turned on the A/C. The fan came on immediately, and the A/C blew cold... leaving me wondering if it would do all this (as in work properly) if the temperature was much hotter, on the first start of the day.

 

So, tomorrow, I am going to wait to start the car until it's much hotter (around 85+ degrees) than today's test, and, if the fan turns on immediately, but the air blows hot for a while, I will have to assume that it is only taking a while to blow cold air because all of the air ducting is extremely hot!

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Bob, when the A/C is blowing hot, check what is the indicated outside temperature. I have noticed in my car (though older generation), after a better disconnect, the outside reading would not work for a while & during that time the A/C would not work correctly. Try also to use the Max A/C, or manually select the coldest temp to see if it makes a difference (system would not rely on outside temperature).

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Good point; I will check to see if there is a reading indicated on the instrument cluster, in case there is a correlation between that reading (which the onboard computer is aware of) and if it blows hot or cold.

 

Also, I've always had the A/C settings set to the lowest it can go ("LO") when I've used the A/C, as well as I've also tried using the "MAX" setting first as well. The only thing the "MAX" setting has done is maybe shortened the time it takes to start blowing cold air down from 5 minutes of driving maybe to 3 or 4 minutes...

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Max uses the LO temp setting and it sets recirculate mode. That's why it cools faster. LO by itself doesn't change the recirculate mode.

 

I don't think it should take more than a minute (probably less) to start blowing cold air.

 

Try it on a normal setting (70 degrees) just for fun.

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I tested it today, and it blew cold air again from the git-go, and every time I checked (including upon first start-up), the outside air temperature indicator was displaying in the instrument cluster. It seems like, as soon as I shared the problem here on the forum, its been working perfectly every time so far!

 

Perhaps I have an intermittent problem going on here; I will continue to monitor the situation over the next few days, to see if it re-occurs.

 

My thanks to everybody that chimed-in with their input!

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To update everyone, I checked it again yesterday (from a "cold" start), when it was 93-degrees outside. The car was flaming hot, yet, the A/C compressor AND the fans turned-on as soon as I started the car and engaged the regular (not "MAX") A/C setting. It took about 60-seconds to start blowing in air that felt "lower" than the ambient temperature of the inside of the car. I figure that a 60-second wait was surely better than the good 5-minutes that it seemed to be taking when I first started this topic. The dash indicator also immediately indicated that it was 93-degrees outside, immediately upon start-up.

 

After running some errands in that heat, I stopped to get the mail, and noticed when I was out of the car (with it still running) that both fans were apparently not only running but running as high/fast as they could... a good indicator that the ECM was telling both of the fans to spin as fast as they could, trying to keep up with not only the high outside ambient temperature but engine heat as well.

 

The bottom line here is that, so far at least, I have suddenly not been able to reproduce the problem I was having before (assuming that I am OK with waiting for 60 seconds before the A/C-treated air starts dropping after start-up in the heat).

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Yeah, I have one of those A/C thermometers; using that to test with will be next!

 

Interestingly enough, today it was 85-degrees outside, and the car, of course, felt like an oven inside. I started it up and it blew very hot air for my first half-mile, before it started to blow even slightly-cooler air inside... and that was after I gave up using the normal setting and put it onto MAX. After a couple of miles of freeway driving, the air was icy cold again... but it still seems to me that this kind of thing shouldn't even be an issue. Maybe I'm expecting too much of the newer R134A systems.

 

Where's that good old R12 refrigerant systems when you need them? Now, those really knew how to blow cold air! LOL!

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Yeah, that's always a possibility.

 

Problem is my local Ford dealer's service department sucks, so I'm hesitant to take it in there. Based on past experience, they'll probably keep my car for 2 or 3 days, then come out scratching their heads, but still saying they couldn't find anything wrong with the system!

 

I think I'm gonna just continue to see what it does, over this summer...

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