Markeb01 Build Thread

[markeb01]

Same sentiments here. Thanks for stopping by and introducing yourself and spending some time with us. I enjoyed eyeballing your truck. It has really turned out to be a beauty!

I completed the air conditioner installation today. The layout turned out as neat as could be expected, having no inner fenders to hide anything:



The way the kit is designed, the drier is attached to the passenger side of the condenser, and comes with formed aluminum tubes & fittings that allow terminating the hoses just short of the battery box. This greatly simplifies the overall installation and especially the drier and connections to the condenser.

I had to modify a few little items as the Vintage Air kit didn’t place the formed tubes in the same place my Old Air kit did years ago. I had to use the existing two grommets in the radiator bulkhead instead of the snazzy one piece item in the VA kit.

At first I wanted to use single bulkhead fittings on the firewall for looks, but the more I considered the prospect, I realized it was just going to make the connections far more difficult at the evaporator. I would have needed short hoses from the evaporator to the firewall, and the #10 hose would have been extremely troublesome to connect as I have very limited access to get my hands up against the inside of the firewall.

I decided to connect the evaporator hoses directly to the compressor and drier using individual grommets in the firewall instead. I ordered new grommets from Summit on Sunday. They shipped out of Nevada yesterday and arrived today just as I was debating whether to push ahead and use old grungy grommets. Talk about good timing!

I connected the hoses at the evaporator first, to make sure I could. The engine side of the firewall was easy. Each fitting was checked to make sure the o ring was in place, lubed up with the provided oil, and snugged up. The instructions provide torque specs, which seems rather ludicrous as there is no way to tighten the fittings with a torque wrench, but it does give the impression that you shouldn’t go nuts on torque.

After everything else was in place, I installed the safety (Trinary) switch in the port provided on the drier. The last connections were the hard tubes into the drier. I read somewhere that one drop of water is twice the capacity of the receiver drier, so it is imperative to keep it sealed to keep out atmospheric moisture. With the system completed and closed, I moved on to the wiring starting with the safety switch.

While the directions are adequate, it’s really helpful if you already know what you’re doing. The wiring turned out to be far simpler than it seemed. There are 4 wires on the Trinary switch. Two blues, and two black/green wires.

There are 3 wires on the evaporator. One red and white (with a 20 amp inline fuse) for power. A green one to turn the compressor on, and a ground wire. On the power wire I removed the inline fuse holder and connected it to a dedicated 30 amp terminal on the Ron Francis fuse panel. The ground wire was connected to the master ground terminal strip, and the green wire connects to either of the black/green wires on the safety switch.

The other black/green wire runs to the compressor. One blue wires goes to ground, and the other goes to terminal 86 on the fan relay. I did have to remove the relay panel so I could pull the fan relay and figure out which terminal was number 86. That’s all there is to it.

The last items to accomplish were wrapping the large connection at the evaporator with a tar like material they call “press tape”. And the final step was drilling the floor and installing drain hoses from the lower rear corners of the evaporator case to the newly punched holes in the floor. Their recommendation was to drill one hole, and connect both sides of the case with a T in the drain hose. Because there is so much distance between the floor and the dash, I thought the single hose with a T looked stupid. I asked my wife to come look for a second opinion, and she thought it looked stupid too. It looked like some type of metal cart handle laying on the floor, so I drilled a hole on each side of the tunnel and ran individual drain hoses like they did on the original 1960 dealer installed A/C units:




It’s now ready for an appointment to have the system vacuumed and charged. I’m really glad my part of the A/C installation is completed, and there were no surprises or disasters.

I still have a few little things to clean up – like rotating the upper heater hose clamp, reinstalling the defrost diverter and the glovebox, and building a support for the tubes under the battery tray. Pretty minor considering all the other stuff this project has required.