VW Golf Aircon Not Working - Compressor Fault?

With the hot weather we've had over the last week I found that the aircon in my MK4 VW Golf had stopped working and was no longer blowing cold. Initially I thought it needed regassing to took the car to the local garage to be topped up.

VW Golf Aircon Not Working - regassing

They connected it up and found that the coolant level was fine but that the compressor pump wasn't coming on so no refrigerant was circulating. The diagnosis was that the compressor needed to be replaced which was around £450 including parts and labour.

However I noticed that there were some wires for the ASR/ESP sensor that were disconnected and also 2 other broken wires. Tracing them back they were connected to the air con compressor so it looked like a probable reason for the compressor failure.

VW Golf Aircon Not Working - Compressor Wiring Fault

Next step was to reconnect the wires and see if that fixed the air conditioning. Good news - it now works! So by fixing the wires above the gearbox the compressor is now powered and the air con is ice cold again.

There are 4 wires above the gearbox, 2 for the ESP/ASR sensor and 2 for the air con compressor. The thicker wires with brown and green colour coating are the air con compressor wires, the yellow and blue are the ESP/ASR sensor wires