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My daughter just bought a very nice 2006 RX330 and has small hole in condenser. After reading on line I now see that is very common. I am very good with tools and bought a new condenser yesterday. I would love to read a do it yourself topic on this. Is there one? Anyone here done this? Please respond with info. I will start this tomorrow. (Sunday) I plan to replace the part and then take to my local AC guy to have all cleaned, vacuum pulled and then recharged. If I have time I will also put the gutter screen material in front after reading that on your wonderful site.
Hey Bryan, I have changed them before and it's pretty straight forward, I haven't done this on the RX but most are similar, anytime opening the a/c system it's best to replace the dryer also. I have replaced them and is not hard either, just oil the o-rings with some refrigerant oil before assembly, then have the vacuum pulled and charged.
OK, I completed it today. On a scale of 1 to 10 I would say its a 2. This was very easy. Took only 20 minutes to remove the damaged condenser and then start to install the new. Here is how to:
1. Here are the tools I used.
2. First you need to remove the 10mm bolts that hold the air intake on and lay it out of the way.
3. Then you need to remove the 10mm bolts that hold the horns on and lay them aside.
4. Then remove the 4 bolts holding the radiator and condenser cap on.
5. Remove the brace in front of the condenser.
6. Lay it all on top of the engine out of the way.
Remove the two small screws and two bolts on the top of radiator holder.
Lay the brace to the side and now the condenser will come right out. I installed the new one in reverse order listed above and then drove to the local AC Mechanic. He pulled the vacuum and recharged it all up. Blowing ice cold again.
Condenser was $71 from my local body shop. His cost.
AC Mechanic charged $75.
About 2 hours labor on my part.
All done
Last edited by BryanHenry; 01-10-17 at 05:25 PM.
Reason: update
Did this today. There's also two Phillips on the bottom, either sides.
This would have been a <1hr job, except the screws were rusted and couldn't loosen them. Ended up trying to drill them out and found the screws are about a 1" long. Took an additional hour trying to figure this out and ended up prying the tabs flat.
AC now blows ice cold air now on drivers and passengers. Suspected it was the condenser when the high port was 4x higher than the low port, indicating something was causing a blockage in-between.
01-07-17, 06:17 AM
Do it yourself AC Condenser
