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Midi_Amp
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Calling Freed owners in Asia,
Anybody can explain the A/C components in this car? I have a plan to upgrade my buzzy SX4 to the Freed. I've test drove the car back and forth several times and kind of made my mind to purchase the car... However, I'm bothered to hell with one of the local Honda sales team statement that said the Freed features a double fan single blower A/C on the front dashboard instead of the more common double blower A/C.
... What's a "double fan single blower" A/C?...
When I test drove the Freed, it was a bright sunny day with around 32 degrees Celsius at around 12PM. I started the car and set the blower to maximum for 3 minutes and set the blower to 1 before driving around. I personally don't feel the heat on the driver side, but the missus who was sitting in the back felt a bit hot after a while. So I switched the blower to 2 and everything is good on the second row.
Is the double fan stuff was just a lip service for people to swallow in the lack of second blower for the second and third row occupants? Because the A/C needed to be on "2" to get cool air to the second row... Not that I complaint much because the blower noise on "2" is not that intrusive.
I could care less about the double fan single blower statement... But I'm fairly eco conscious and I wanted to know how good/bad the car's A/C saps the overall fuel mileage over "1". On my car, setting the blower from "1" to "2" doesn't change the fuel consumption much more than if I turned off the A/C (about 1.5 Km/L difference), but at full blast fuel consumption average worsen for about 2 Km/L. I'm using the onboard computer to estimate the difference in fuel consumption.
Now that my little angel has arrived, I'm looking for a proper family hauler without the need to make friends with the fuel station attendants. I'm not expecting hybrid like fuel consumption, but just curious how the Freed's fuel consumption impacted by the use of its A/C. I've done a simple review of the Freed on my blog based on test drives and hitching a ride with a friend's, but never comprehensive enough to pin in the A/C.
Mr. Wong, if you read this, please include an objective A/C evaluation on your Freed write up.
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WongKN
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Midi-Amp,
The Freed review is going to take some time. A couple of weeks ago during a media event, I enquired about the availability of the Freed media cars and was told they are booked solid for the next few months. Being somewhat of a specialty model, there's only a couple of units and as usual, the all the regular motoring journalists are falling over each other to get the car early to try to be the first review.
FWIW, I believe the double-fan single blower means the compressor is full width and thus both fans are running when the air-cond is on. This is unlike the EG/EK Civics for e.g. which has a half-width radiator and compressor and only 1 fan works for cooling or air-cond.
The single blower statement can be misleading occasionally. It means there is a single blower / motor blowing against the cooling coil. This controls how much air-flow comes out of the air-cond vents. However, what you want to know is whether there are any vents to the rear of the Freed, which the bad news is I remember there is none. This was one of the comments/compliants during the media drive event and the R&D engineers actually took down this comment and said they will look into this matter, probably for the MMC.
This was the same problem with the Stream though the Stream has a special streamlined roof which helps channel the air-cond flow towards the last row. The Freed however, does not have this feature.
IMHO, it is definitely something you need to think about, given the unusually polarised weather we tend to have over here in ASEAN nowadays (either very hot/dry or rains until it floods, at least over here in my country).
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Midi_Amp
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WongKN wrote:
Midi-Amp,
FWIW, I believe the double-fan single blower means the compressor is full width and thus both fans are running when the air-cond is on. This is unlike the EG/EK Civics for e.g. which has a half-width radiator and compressor and only 1 fan works for cooling or air-cond.
The single blower statement can be misleading occasionally. It means there is a single blower / motor blowing against the cooling coil. This controls how much air-flow comes out of the air-cond vents. However, what you want to know is whether there are any vents to the rear of the Freed, which the bad news is I remember there is none. This was one of the comments/compliants during the media drive event and the R&D engineers actually took down this comment and said they will look into this matter, probably for the MMC.
This was the same problem with the Stream though the Stream has a special streamlined roof which helps channel the air-cond flow towards the last row. The Freed however, does not have this feature.
IMHO, it is definitely something you need to think about, given the unusually polarised weather we tend to have over here in ASEAN nowadays (either very hot/dry or rains until it floods, at least over here in my country).
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Thank you for the input Mr. Wong. Sorry if I misunderstood your point here, so what exactly are the advantages for having a full width compressor? Does cool air produced faster compared to half width radiator and compressor?
I understand the limitation of the single blower system, but I'm still taking my chances because I've test drove the Grand Livina and the Freed... The Freed is just better all around, minus the price. The Grand Livina even though has a second A/C blower, it's placed on the bottom part of center console/arm rest thus airflow is blocked by the second row seat.
I don't think the Freed will ever get a double blower. IMO, the Stream uses a band aid method by placing a second blower on the right side of the third row seat... Seriously... My brother drives one, and when I get the short end of the stick (actually always) I have to sit on the left side of the third row, or my posterior will froze over. The Freed on the other hand doesn't have much space on the third row seat. It already housed the speakers and the power sliding door motor. They can use Freed's tall roof, but the structure is built to accommodate panoramic glass roof. IMHO Perhaps they can pull a side vent or something, it would be an engineering marvel, but as much as I expect Honda engineers to pull it off, I'm toning down my expectation.
Floods? I studied for two years at Petaling Jaya and never encountered any... Maybe just lucky :)
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WongKN
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Full width means more frontal area to air-flow and thus better cooling capacity. Because of the width, two fans are used to pull enough air through under stationary conditions or slow speeds. There are advantages and disadvantages to this. Full width means we have to 'stack up' the condensor and radiator, meaning the radiator receives warm air instead of cool air. This can interfere with the cooling efficiency of the raditor. A half-width raditor and condensor sits side by side and both gets the benefit of the cooler outside air. However, for the older EG and EK SiRs, the half-width radiators really are not capable of optimum cooling of the B16As, especially after some modifications. They (SiRs) are JDM-only models, mainly except for a very few exceptions, so Honda really didn't expect them to be used in the hot/humid conditions in ASEAN (in general). I know lots of people with modified EG and EK SiRs who swapped in full width radiators, some even using the double layer radiators found in the automatic models.
As for the weather, the truth of the matter is flooding has become more common place and in recent years more severe. One can argue using statistics and what not but the truth is there are now a lot of people who are adversely affected by flooding, at least over here in my country. A customer of mine lost his entire house to a very bad flood a couple of years ago. Just another couple of years before that, an entire housing area was isolated (in Shah Alam, in case you have heard of it) - cut off from the outside world by severe flood, to the extent that stranded house owners starved when they run out of food. When my customer lost his house two years ago, around a quarter of a million people also lost their homes and all that happened was that nature just decided to rain a little bit harder, for just a little bit longer.
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