Non-Mopar A/C Issue-Help????

Hello,

My wife has a DD 98 Civic which has about 150K on it. Completely trouble free to this point. Just maintence.

She was driving home tonight and noticed that it was cutting out a bit when the AC kicked on. She heard a belt squeal once or twice. Noticable drop in power and mileage when the compressor kicks in. I could feel it at idle.
When we got home I checked it over.

Is this just a freon issue, or something worse?

I added about a half of a can and it didn't seem to help.

I noticed while sitting in the car in neutral and I would hold it at 4k it would rev freely and was fine. As soon as the AC kicked on it dropped to 2k and was noticeably less responsive.

Ideas? Is it the compressor dying or??? I don't want to screw anything up so I am having her run with no AC. That won't last for long, so any ideas here?

I did do some research and apparently the compressor won't kick on if the Freon is low. The compressor does kick on and almost short cycles it feels like to me.

Thank you, ROB
Author: admin