Saturn Repair: SC2 Air Compressor Swap or Reason?, side fender, diagnois

Question
My girlfriend owns a 96 SC2 and the A/C has been out for the last few months, now that the warm season has come here in Oregon, We need A/C for our 13 month old boy.  I took it in to a local shop and the diagnois it that the compressor is out and that they could not find a replacement very easily. I looked it up on the Web and found three off the bat.  So what should I do, get a second opinion, buy it and have it installed by shop/self?  Please help!
Thank you and Best wishes,
Andrew in Oregon

Answer
Andrew,
 First, don't ever take your vehicle back to that place.  If they can't find an A/C compressor (acutally one of the most common in the U.S. due to the fact that GM uses it on many of their other vehicles), who knows what they would do to your vehicle.  Next, I would acually venture to guess that your A/C system has a leak somewhere and that your compressor is not bad at all.  I'm not saying that it's not possible, only that most A/C problems are caused by lack of freon.  Idle your vehicle with the A/C on full blast.  Get under the hood and look at the clutch on the very end of the A/C compressor (closest to the passenger side fender).  If the clutch is spinning you might have a problem with the compressor.  If it is not spinning, you will probably have a leak.  Let me know how that turns out and we'll go from there.

Chris