Ford Repair: Ford Escort Wagon, ford escort wagon, first postion

Question
Hello Jordan,
My name is Sandi and I'm all so an expert at this site except my wisdom is in the field of judo. Your the first person I've ever asked a question of,so here goes. I have a 93 ford escort wagon with a 1.9 engine,and up till just about a   month ago the AC seem to work fine. I'm  pretty sure I mostly need to recharge the system but the main question is would the system being low cause the AC light not to come on when I move the switch from 1 to 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 for the fan blower. Just so you know what I mean,on my car the fan has 5 settings and in the center of this knob is a button you push in to turn on the AC. While the knob is in the first postion the AC comes on not real great but you can feel it just barely, but when you turn the knob up to the next setting or the next and so on the blue AC light goes off and it only blows regular air not cooled air. I also notice it seems to make the engine labor and kind of try to stall, mostly when trying to pick up speed going up hill. I'm not sure if this almost stalling is due to AC or something else. I'm going to put on a new fuel filter and PVC vaule this weekend and see if this helps. Any insight you can give me I'd sure could use.
Hope you have time for one more question, I need to repair the rear shocks or shock towers, they are real bad but what parts I need to rebuilt or repair them I'm not sure, I know there's a boot of some kind that is totaly shot but what else i need I'm not sure my book is not real clear. Thanks in advance for you help if you can, if you can't thanks for your time. By the way the car has 193,400 miles on it, but there is no oil leaks, and seem to be pretty good shape other wise except I have to relace the left drive shaft and one of the left tierods. ThanksSandi

Answer
I dont know, if the air works on the first fan switch but not on the higher ones it would seem the switches fault.  The two systems, the fan selector and ac button, are not realy connected to eachother.  As far as the rear shocks, just buy two new shocks.  There cheep, about 30 bucks a piece.