XJ9884

Hi Everyone,

First off, these forums are truly amazing; I have been spending hours on here every day reading, and have learned so much over the past month or two. Thanks to everyone for being so helpful and polite and sharing what they learned.

I know A/C compressor issues have been beat to death all over the net, but I have some specific questions I was hoping to get answered and am hoping you can help narrow down whether I just need to remove a shim or bearing, or do a bypass.

Car is a 98 XJ Sport, 4.0 / V6, with 200k mi. I bought it about 6 months ago and she's not in the best shape, but I'd like to keep her running as long as possible both as a learning project and because its my DD. Onto the problem:

The AC never blew cold air, so I never used it, but I did use the defrost this past winter, and it seemed to work fine. Just recently I started noticing a burning rubber smell, which I am pretty sure I can trace back to the belt slipping on AC pulley because there is a definite chirp happening from that area. I've sprayed water on it and the noise goes away, so I'm under the assumption it's a misalignment issue. The A/C pulley seems to be working normally but for some reason the clutch plate engages every once in a while, even though my ac/defrost is totally off, and it seems like it puts a heavy load on the engine - is this normal? I was under the impression it should only engage when one of those above was running.

(I'm working on uploading a pic / video now, hoping that will help out a bit)

XJ9884

I'll try and upload any codes later tonight