AC light turns itself off, blows hot

Discussion in 'Prime Care, Maintenance and Troubleshooting' started by Shameless, Jul 5, 2025 at 12:12 PM.

  1. Shameless

    Shameless Member

    Joined:
    Mar 7, 2014
    71
    38
    1
    Location:
    Western Massachusetts
    Vehicle:
    2017 Prius Prime
    Model:
    Prime Plus
    Got a 2017 Prime. Started blowing warmer. Now it's basically got no cooling power at all. I figured maybe I just needed a refrigerant top-up. That led me down a rabbit hole of trying to figure out which refrigerant, and whether I should do it myself, as I have in every other car I've had. Still haven't figured out the answer to either of those. I have a can of R134a.

    Anyway. Connected the cheapo gauge with the can, and even though I lost a little refrigerant in the process of just checking, I think, the refrigerant was still in the green. (Can't remember for sure right now, but probably 35 or so?)

    Stopped there to do more research. Checked error codes with the button-pushing trick, and got 00. Which means no errors, correct?

    But here's where I'm really puzzled: I had the AC and recirc buttons on, just to see if anything would happen. In a few minutes, both the lights were off. Repeated to make sure I wasn't missing something, and yep, for sure. It's done it repeatedly.

    When I hit AC, I hear a pretty loud sound which I assume is the compressor.

    I just paid a boat load to get my daughter's AC fixed (on a Honda), so if this is doable without trying to find a Prius AC specialist, that sure would be nice.

    Any ideas? Thanks!