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Fixing your car's air conditioning shouldn't be like a search for buried treasure!

The RockAuto.com catalog has complete A/C kits with everything you need at reliably low prices.

I'm not a mechanic. But, if it's something simple I will attempt it after viewing a few YouTube videos of people smarter than me. I did just that before I went to replace the battery in my 2010 Toyota Prius. This was in the winter, and with no room in the garage, it was a cold job.

I followed the YouTube geniuses step by step, but when it was time to start up the car - nothing. I checked the connections and everything looked fine. I went inside to warm up and watch some more videos, thinking that this was a mortal Prius electrical problem that would be the death of my car. I went out, un-installed the battery, then re-installed it and ... same problem! There was nothing to indicate any power going anywhere in the vehicle.

I warmed up again and checked the Prius online forums for any ideas. Third time was the charm - because that is when I discovered I had not removed the plastic caps on the battery terminals! Now the first thing I will do before installing a new battery is take the caps off.

Throw-away plastic terminal caps

Tom in Canada

Your vehicle's engine may have a heated positive crankcase ventilation (PCV) valve. The heyday for the heated PCV valve was about a dozen model years ago. An electric heating element or warm engine coolant prevents water vapor from freezing and blocking the PCV valve. A blocked PCV valve would prevent pulling clean air into and dirty air out of the crankcase. That would increase the pressure and temperature of the gases in the crankcase which could lead to engine oil leaks, prematurely degraded oil and other problems.

PCV valves have been around since the 1960s so you might ask why PCV valves freezing closed only became a potential problem during this century. PCV valves on older engines are usually in contact with valve covers or intake manifolds that heat up relatively quickly. The crankcase air might not have been that tightly sealed in to begin with either. Newer engines are more likely to have the PCV valve perched on top of isolated plastic components that retain less heat.

Modern engines need to warm up quickly to optimize fuel efficiency and emissions. The vehicle's interior heater will get warm quicker too. Having separate heaters for individual components like PCV valves is costly for vehicle manufacturers trying to save every penny they can. Engine designers (hardware, software, materials, etc.) had a lot of incentives to figure out how to warm up the engine oil, crankcase gases and PCV passages quicker so that there was no opportunity for cold water vapor to freeze in a cold PCV valve. Better designs meant heated PCV valves gradually became less and less necessary on the newest engines.

Like conventional PCV valves, heated PCV valves wear out and need to be replaced as part of routine maintenance. The same make and model year vehicle may or may not have a heated PCV valve depending on which engine or option package (i.e. cold weather) it has. A good place to start identifying what is on your engine is looking at the PCV valve design or designs listed for your specific vehicle under "Exhaust & Emission" in the RockAuto.com catalog. Then match the PCV valve photo in the catalog with what you see on your engine.

Ford (left & center) & BMW (right) coolant & electrically heated PCV Valves

An electrically heated PCV valve typically looks like a traditional PCV valve plus an electrical connector. If a previous owner replaced the electrically heated PCV valve with an unheated one then you may just find a disconnected wiring harness. The previous owner may have not been able to find a replacement electrically heated PCV valve or he/she did not drive the vehicle in below freezing temperatures and decided to save money by buying a conventional PCV valve for the engine.

PCV valves heated with coolant typically have two hoses for the incoming and outgoing transfer case gases plus two hoses for the incoming and outgoing engine coolant. The replacement PCV valve will usually include replacement hoses to fix and/or help prevent future coolant leaks.

Tom Taylor,
RockAuto.com

To read more of Tom's articles, click this link and choose from story titles on the Newsletter Archives page.