11: Hoses and Fittings

[Jonny Retrofit]

Hose Routing

There are many ways of routing the refrigerant hoses; see below for the for the basic circuit. As long as you follow this scheme, you can route the hoses as you wish. 

Please note that we provide 4m of each size which should suit most applications.  Contact us if you need more but the goal is to minimise hose length to increase efficiency.  Measure twice, cut once!

Identify the fittings noting that there are two different hose sizes (#6 and #8) used.  Some fittings have the same port size but different hose size (e.g. on the condenser).  The larger #8 hose is used between evaporator and compressor and between compressor and condenser only. See Appendix J for a graphic to aid identification of pipe fittings.

Position of charge ports is up to you and dependent on installation.  Dry fit the hoses without the clips and cut hoses to size for your installation.

Tip:  Use cheap garden hose to work out run lengths first before cutting the actual hose!

On a RHD G model, routing can go inside the car, down the inner wing, although a little condensation can be expected.  On a LHD, hoses can be routed through the hole in the bottom of the smugglers box to head towards the condenser.

Crimping the hoses.  Please refer to this video for instructions on how to crimp the connections. 

 

[classicretrofit]

We prefer to remove the blue spacer clip after use as it looks better, hence we only supply 4 per kit.  Before use, clip out the side of the spacer so that it can be pushed off the fitting and reused.

Some fittings can be tight due to variance in port and fitting sizes.  Tighten the nut while applying corrective force to bring the fitting in square to the port.

Fittings should not look like this:

Example hose routing on a LHD Carrera 3.2 that originally had factory A/C:

Drier on original Porsche bracket ( as an alternative to our horseshoe bracket ).  Hoses under car also using original pipe clip locations.  No pipes running to the back of the car obviously.

[classicretrofit]

Pipework fitting identification

 

The following graphic is to aid identification of the pipework fittings. The actual number of items, such as the blue plastic clip fitting guides, may vary in your kit.