The heat arrived with no warning, and my spontaneous trip to France didn’t help!

As for my AC. I don’t really want to take the car to a generic local garage as I’m not convinced they’d know where to look on a P38. Perhaps the system is no different to any other car and I’m just overthinking it.

I paid around £100 for a regas last year and it worked perfectly for a few months, until it suddenly didn’t. At one point, friends travelling behind me mentioned they saw what looked like a large pool of fluid leaking from the vehicle, which at the time I assumed was the washer bottle/tank leaking.

I’ve since refilled the washer fluid and observed absolutely no leaks, so I’m now wondering whether what they actually saw could have been refrigerant oil or simply heavy A/C condensation.

Can the main chains (Kwik Fit, ATS, Halfords etc.) generally diagnose these systems properly, or is this the sort of thing better suited to a Land Rover/4x4 specialist for a proper diagnosis?

Based in West Midlands.

The liquid is condensate from the AC evaporator, it will drip out around the area of the gearbox and be worse when the weather is humid, you will get a lot. More than once I've had people point out that I have a leak when stopped for fuel but it is perfectly normal.

Kwik Fit, ATS, Halfords will connect their machine, poke the button and leave it to get on with the job. When it fails the vacuum leak test, they will tell you that you have a leak so they cant do anything with it. A land Rover specialist may well do the same thing, you need an AC specialist that can fill it with trace gas and use a sniffer to identify where the leak is. Chances are, it will be the top right hand corner of the condenser as that is where they always leak from if you still have the original condenser. However, it might be worth taking it into KwikFit or one of the others and ask them to regas it. It may be that the leak isn't bad enough for it to fail their test so they will gas it and it will at least work for a while.

Beware Halfords. My daughter went there last year, and they just used top-up cans. Most branches do not have proper machines anymore, and staff are untrained.

I contacted Halfrauds head office & complained & pointed out the law about filling a leaking system. Got a full refund.

Absolutely get a good specialist in to check for leaks and do a proper refill job. The P38 system takes a lot of gas and, even in the days when operators were more trained Halfords, Kwikfit and the other fast-fit places routinely under-filled them. Considerable heat and light on my one and only experience of Halfords when I asked why they had only half filled it. Much crap about machine settings and a maximum delivery per job so no possibility of top up.

The aluminium pipes are getting old and fatigue splits / partial fractures can occur. It appears that some can no longer be got off the shelf too. A good specialist will know where to get fatigue splits repaired or custom pipes made. Going to a specialist also means they are on the hook if a new condenser fails. Did my own condenser replacement in 2011 but when that that showed a leak at the tag end of 2023 I got the specialist to change it. A good thing too because the new one popped after about 6 weeks which he replaced free of charge. Apparently the quality of even known reliable brands has dropped off.

Clive

Always point out the label on the slam panel, plus take a copy of the Lubricants & Fluids Capacities page from the Workshop manual.