A/C Compressor Cycling on & off repeatedly

[Skisnokc]

Driving on the hwy yesterday. I noticed that out of the blue the a/c compressor is cycling on & off almost constantly. I have one of those a/c fill couplers with color coded gauge, green low, blue good, yellow & red, with it hooked up the gauge bounces back & forth from blue to green while the engine is under a load ( about 3k rpm to simulate hwy speeds) at idle the gauge sits in the green & when the compressor kicks on it jumps to almost the yellow. it also doesn't seem to be quite as rapid at idle as it is under a load. it still blows cold so there's no malfunction other than the compressor is cycling on and off. Any ideas?

 

[Muadeeb]

Take it to a shop that can hook it up to the high and low sides; it's hard to say much without the high side info too. But remember that some cycling is normal.

As for what pressures you should have, it depends on temperature as well as humidity. You could have a small leak that has finally put pressures down low enough that the pressure switch cuts out when under load. As with CEL codes, it's hard to do much troubleshooting without the pressures.

 

[AaronsX]

No no this has JUSt happen to me and I fixed it today. Why its jumping back and forth is because you NEED to have the blowing on 4 and the AC on with the knob all the way on cold. Let it run for a minute then hook it back up. Mine had way to much in the system and thats what was causing mine to kick off and on every 30 seconds. I released all the nasty yellow freon into a gatorade bottle then bought a recharge kit freon kit and refilled it thru the same port. It blows cold again and doesn't kick on and off!