All right all right. We went to the beach. Camper camped on Jekyll, good times were had.
Alright, here's the business end of this thing:
This view is the passenger side of the unit. The controller ECU at the top, plugs facing passenger seat. There are four nozzles on the end for vent out put. The two in the middle left are defrost. Visible with a translucent cap is one of the refrigerant fittings.
The rear has the two ports for heater core. These bring challenges as they are overlapped by the firewall side mounting bracket.
With the bracket on, you can't tighten the heater connections. With the bracket off, you can put them on, but not get the bracket on. This came on and off about ten times so far.
What I learned is.
1) Check the heater fittings for shape, they need to be 90 degrees. If they aren't they won't fit through the plate on the firewall.
If you have a bender that these will fit in, use that. A cheapo brake line bender is too small. If not, I would recommend putting a wrench in a vise, and then lacing the fitting through it then bending it.
The rear bracket has welded nuts on the inside so that you can hold the package up to the firewall and run the bolt in from the engine side. I think this is a drag. Instead I used longer bolts, and pre-threaded them into the bracket from the inside. I put them on hand tight, then put the firewall side bracket on the housing. Then I backed the bolts off as much as I could so they stuck out as little as possible. Use a 2" bolt to clear the spacers that I forgot about, and to have enough meat on the engine side to get a nut on.
Here they are before I backed them out.
More on this later.
Back to the heater fittings:
Since they have to be tightened with the bracket on, I held the wrench on the brass fitting and the bracket up out of the way with one hand, and tightened the fitting with the other hand.
It's important here to make sure the O ring is lubed and installed.
It's also important to make sure the rubber plug comes off with the plastic cap.
Next is two lines for the evaporator.
The refrigerant lines will need a little tuning too, but moved pretty easily compared to the coolant lines.
Getting this thing in is a tight squeeze. Since I'm going peel and stick insulation on the firewall, I removed the cardboard backed fuzzy stuff.
I also had to remove the floor light that's over the trans tunnel. That opened up room for the vent side to fit in. You have to kind of roll the thing in, it catches on the bottom of the dash where the glovebox screws in.
Once I had it tipped up with the fittings through the plate, I tightened the two screws on the mounting bracket and got them lined up. I almost had it in place with a bungee cord, but had to call the Missus out to push on it so I could tighten from the engine side.
Forget the bracket that goes on the other side facing the seats. It makes installing this thing a lot harder than it needs to be. You can easily put it on and bolt it in after the whole thing is hung up.
There is a valve that goes on the water pump output that the system can close. This is where I found out that Vintage Air uses 5/8" hose for inlet and out.
Next up was duct work.
I'm stupid and cut the 2" duct for the defroster vents in half. I thought I had read the instructions, but if I did, I didn't retain the part that said the driver side hose has to be (obviously) longer.
This hose is like corrugated dryer hose, but rubberized. It cuts easily and you stretch it over the ports. The ports have notches to catch the wire. I tried to get two wires over the notch so a full circle was captured.
The vents install by dropping them in from the top. There is a thin edge that faces the windshield.
For the one that I cut too short, I threaded some long needle nose through one of them, and pulled three loops of hose into the other one. They won't be coming out on their own, and there is enough length now to make the connection.
I ordered this kit with a Sanden compressor bracket for Tall Valve Covers. I do not have tall, but I figured I'd keep the part if I swap motors.
The only difference is the passenger side bracket has an extension that raises the compressor up.
For reference I have early 90s pre Vortec SBC serpentine brackets.
I have NO IDEA, how the tall valve cover bracket works. Similarly I have no idea how the regular one works. None of the bits in the bag added up to anything that would allow the compressor to install.
The left piece is the tall valve cover extension. I shot some rattle can black on them.
On the GM brackets, press out the steel inserts. I kept them with my bypass pulley, I could strap the compressor to the fender and drive home on the pulley if I had to I guess.
The final deal with the compressor bracket was that I had to make a space out of 1/4" and grind it down a hair to like 13/64.
The whole kit:
Brackets installed on the driver side of the compressor. The center hole is used to connect to the factory bracket. Driver side installs with just spacers.
