I tried giving it a chance on a few hot days and found it annoying. I set the temp to 70F, hit AUTO and let the system do it's thang. My main gripes:

- Defaults to fresh air. When it's 90 out with 55% humidity, re-circ does a better job of cooling down the cabin versus cooling the hot outside air.
- The fan blasts at full speed for a LONG time, even after the cabin's frosty. Not sure if placement of the temperature sensor has an affect.

Looks like this dinosaur is going to keep using the manual settings

 

The problem with automatic settings is that not everyone likes the same thing. So no matter how you design something, there will be people that want it some other way.

I totalled my Maxima back in January and have a Lexus now. You would like the a/c system as it comes on in recirculate and takes about 15 minutes of effing with it to change it over to fresh air.

But the part about the fan remaining on high. If you have the temperature set all the way down to it's lowest setting, that is telling the system to not regulate the temperature, just keep blowing at maximum cold. Try running it with the temperature set to one degree above the lowest possible. Maybe that will make a difference.

Another possibility is that maybe the in-cabin temperature sensor is messed up. There is a built in self diagnostic that will check the reading from this sensor (and all the others) and display them to you. You would have to have a thermometer in the car to know what the temperature actually is for comparison.

Directions are in the FSM, starting on page 36 of the HA (Heating and Air conditioning) chapter - http://boredmder.com/FSMs/Infiniti/I35/2002/HA.pdf

Test # 5 is where the temperature sensor outputs are displayed.

Test # 3 takes a while to run, so don't get impatient.

If you don't run the self diagnostic outside in the daylight, you will get a Sunload Sensor failure. So if you do this in a garage or at night, you can ignore the failure.

 

It works good enough, but I think your main issue is b/c the interior becomes very heated in the sun (retains the heat by the sensor), so it reads higher than where you're sitting.

I set mine 2 degrees above what I want and I'm comfortable. But I do blast it (set to 60) until it's to temp. The fresh air setting is bull****, though. It should remember your last setting.

 

I'm in Houston, so, 100F + and 90-100% humidity daily.

I have mine set at 72. When I leave work, it will go full blast for almost 15 mins before lowering just one fan speed. About 10 mins later, it will go down to speed 2. It won't go to fan speed one at all during my hour long commute home.

Seems normal to me.

 

I've had many different makes & models of cars with auto climate control & I have never liked using the Auto CC function for air conditioning. Going back to the early 90's in my 1991 Thunderbird the Auto CC never seemed to work to my liking for Air conditioning. However, in every car I've ever owned with Auto CC, I really liked using the Auto function for heat in the winter.

I don't know what it is with the Auto function for AC but in the cars I've owned over the years that ranged from 5 different manufactures & 8 different models all with Auto CC, I never liked how it worked in the summer. I have always chose manual mode whenever I put the AC on.

 

Do you have it on re-circ or fresh air? At highway speeds, the car should get comfortable relatively quickly, so the fan blasting at speeds 3-4 for 30 minutes is annoying and unnecessary. My Pilot has ACC and it does the same thing. I haven't tried ACC in the winter yet but will give it a whirl then. I'll also take a look at the diagnostic feature Dennis mentioned.

 

It defaults to fresh air. When the fan starts to get annoying, I'll switch it to recirc.

I dont know what winter is, so i can't help there.

 

I like my simple manual climate control. It's a bit lame and boring, but allows me to cool myself down how I want to with no issues.

 

Yea, but then you can't be posh with a 13yr old almost luxury car.

lol

 

Don't need to worry about that just yet .