Questions about replacing a 2008 ac compressor

Your problem is going to be the evaporator usually in these cars and that's in the dash the whole car inside has to come apart it's about a well very long job very labor-intensive lots of plastic lots of possibility to break things even more that sort of thing in my world just puts that car to spring fall and winter use because I have three or four of them so the other ones with the working air would be used in the summer. I don't know about Toyota telling everybody compressors exploded what happened to yours did it explode or it just stopped working or it ran low on gas and ran at $9,000 RPMs for about a week straight because you just kept turning it up higher thinking I don't know what one would think but anyway so there's always that you'd have to disconnect major hoses and blow through them or something to see the receiver dryer is built to the condenser I believe so if you get a new condenser because yours is damaged down at the bottom and fins are all bent up probably a good idea that way you get a new desiccant sack filter dryer whatever you want to call it that won't be full of anything It's possible to take the compressor off turn it over on a white paper towel and let it stand like that for a couple hours some oil will probably come running out possibly with metal shavings in it they'll be like silver shavings in this yellowish color looking oil I do believe of course there should be some that's the nature of the air conditioning compressor revolving. But it shouldn't be excessive like an explosion look where there would be a very big ratio of metal to oil that's where I would start before I start buying parts

 

Open the compressor cover and you will see something like this. Small chips from the impeller are carried throughout the system by the refrigerant.

 

this happened to my 07 Camry hybrid, the ac compressor blew up inside. Metal fragments everywhere. Cause of the blow up, evaporator leaking slowly over time which depletes the refrigerant oil needed to lubricate the compressor.

At a minimum you could just try buy an eBay used compressor (around $100+ or less) and then replace the condenser and drier (the new condenser will have the drier inside installed) Most of the fragments will get stuck in the condenser and in the drier. Just to be safe you can also replace the expansion valve but it's not that easy access.

In my case I first purchased the ac compressor from eBay and then see if it runs well. I could still smell refrigerant in the cabin and ended up tearing the dash to replace the evaporator. Not a bad job but took me the entire weekend just for the evaporator.