A while back my airconditioner compressor locked up and burned the belt off. I finally got around to pulling the clutch and pulley off and the part that the wire plugs in to and I'm assuming is the braking pad or something melted solid. My question is with the belt off should i be able to to spin the pulleys on the compressor freely by hand or should it be hard to turn ( not using the ruined setup ) ? I'm wanting to figure this out before I start replacing stuff to see if the whole assembly should be replaced.

 

Should spin free.

I'd just buy the whole assembly from a part-out.

 

The pulley should definitely spin easily, the outer plate should also spin. If the outer plate does not spin then generally either the compressor clutch died or the compressor could be locked up internally.

I recently had to replace a compressor on another car, bought for $50 at the junkyard and it worked great. Just make sure when you open the system you get the new compressor in asap so you can try and avoid replacing the accumulator/drier. I have heard that having it open for ~30 mins is ok, you could also try and plug the lines with something.

If your compressor did lock up internally you can have bad luck and have it shoot metal particles through the system. When you take the compressor off be sure to inspect any oil that comes out of it for metal so you know what you may be dealing with.

 

I'm gonna try to call junkyards around here in Virginia to see if I can get lucky. There wasn't a single rx8 in any when I lived in lower west corner of Arkansas.