classicretrofit Posted April 26, 2020 Posted April 26, 2020 See the full thread here on Pelican I've begun discussion with Johnny from Classic Retrofit about putting an order together for the electro cooler AC kit. I had been kind of hanging back to see other people install it in hot temps like FL but I think I'm ready to move forward.
classicretrofit Posted April 26, 2020 Author Posted April 26, 2020 On a separate note...The classic retrofit electric AC and upgraded alternator arrived this week! Stay tuned as I'll be posting the installation process. I imagine I'll be dealing with some complications along the way but so incredibly excited to have AC here in FL!
classicretrofit Posted April 26, 2020 Author Posted April 26, 2020 So here it is in all its glory! The Classic Retrofit electric AC system in the boxes. I spent Saturday and Sunday essentially reading, going to get hardware, mounting the condenser, and pulling apart the fresh air blower. I'll write some short blurbs about the progress above the photos. I have to say that I am so damn impressed with the craftsmanship and the effort Johhny and his team have put into this kit and honestly cannot wait to see how it all works once it's all together. FULL DISCLOSURE: If you see me pointing out things I have encountered along the way; I do not want anyone to take it negatively against the kit. It's just things I encountered and I am fully aware that this is truly a DIY kit and not meant for a beginner DIYer. If you don't feel comfortable with figuring out some things on your own, as well as electrical work, I would encourage you to have a shop install it for you. Be prepared to buy some additional equipment to make it happen. PHASE I: Mounting the Condenser and Drier I would strongly suggest starting here as it's one of the only items that's iffy for fitment. I have an IROC fiberglass bumper and it BARELY fits in there. I have been told that some IROC bumpers are shorter than others so watch out for that when considering this condenser/fan. I had to do some trimming of the brake duct hole so I could move the condenser as far forward as possible so it would fit in the wheel well. I put the wheel back on after we mounted it and made several adjustments to make sure I was not going to hit it. I was not a fan of the bracket supplied for the drier so I made a bracket out of 3/4'' flat bar and mounted it in the back of the wheel where where it belongs from the factory.
classicretrofit Posted April 26, 2020 Author Posted April 26, 2020 Phase Two: Fresh Air Blower Removal Sunday, I started removing the fresh air blower. This was actually a pretty easy job to do. I was able to just pull the hoses off and start unscrewing the blower motor. I'd like to point out that in this phase, it's relatively important to know what hose does what from the factory. Just so you have a better idea of what you are doing with them. Classic Retrofit re-purposes a lot of the hoses and changes some of it up. Per the suggestion of the install manual, we also opted to remove the heater blowers that are inside the cabin on the left and right floorboard areas. It's not shown in the after photos yet but We pulled the blend door units off their mounting points as well to move them around to aid with the new plumbing installation that's currently underway.
classicretrofit Posted April 26, 2020 Author Posted April 26, 2020 We decided to change up the location of the drier and remove it from the fender well and place it inside the smugglers box. Next up was to get the refrigerant lines ran. In order to accomplish this we dropped the pan under the car so we could run some lines from the existing factory routing up into the smugglers box. We decided we did not like the stability of the condenser so we made yet another support bracket for the condenser fan from the fan down to the bottom of the bumper. Now it's solid! You can't see it from the photos, but I took apart the plug from the power for the condenser fan and used an existing grommet to run that through to the frunk and then put the plug back together. The lines are held together by a combination of some custom flat bar brackets, zip ties, and some left over self tapping screws/electrical conduit straps. This worked great for running the lines! So at this point we have run all the lines and are in the phase of mocking everything up in place and pulling things back out of place to test fit and make sure everything is placed properly. In the photo below, you can see the blower, drier, and compressor test mounted. I'm headed to the garage tonight to work on it some more and will report back with more progress next week! I have the photos for the alternator install but I wanted to wait until the fan came back from powder.
classicretrofit Posted April 26, 2020 Author Posted April 26, 2020 Saturday morning I went to home depot and picked up some PVC 1 1/4'' threaded end caps for the two smaller side outlets on the blower that I don't need. I cut them down in size, painted them, and glued them on to shut the holes off. I also picked up some 1/2' clear tubing to run the water drain out the bottom of the blower. I started the morning off by making a ground location in the smugglers box to the right of the drier. This location is ideal because I was able to use a Dremel to clean off the paint on both sides and run a bolt through with washers so it has a lot of contact to ground. Next up was to start doing the hose routing and additional duct work that Classic Retrofit wants you to run. I used Dorman hose as it's very flexible and cheap. The box is 6' long and I needed two of them to be able to run everything. We ran the lines for the driver side with the new T fitting added. It was best to have the blower out for this part and the ability to move the blend units around. If you have a LHD vehicle, the driver side one just needs to be loose but not removed completely. The instructions say to take your time and be patient. I could not agree more. This is not a difficult task but you need to take your time with it. After completing the hose lengths on both sides we bolted the blend units back in place and attempted a test fit of the blower. It possible to place the blower in there with everything else in place, but it take patience and you want to be mindful of all the edges of it as you can damage the unit and possible other components in the car. In our case, I snapped off one of the drain lines at the bottom. So here we are scoring the surface and re-gluing the drain in place. There are two drain holes at the bottom of the blower. You technically only need one so I have one capped off and of course the one I broke is the one I needed lol
classicretrofit Posted April 26, 2020 Author Posted April 26, 2020 Last phase of the installation was to get the blower installed. Due to the lack of space on the driver side; we had to go ahead and crimp down the AC lines that attach to the expansion valve on the side of the blower. The photo below shows us doing that. After we did that we went after a final installation and connection of hoses. Initially we were going to use hose clamps everywhere but it turns out that with the new hose material, we were able to use black zip ties which worked perfectly! This side still bothers me a little but the hoses are squashed a little in a few places and this side of the blower also drives air to the center vent as well as the pass side vent. Flow to this side was initially less than driver side as it only pushed to the drive side vent. Keep in mid that with the help of the blend valves, you can redirect air flow to blow out the bottom of the dash as well as up to the defroster area. All of that remains intact for functionality. Last step was to connect the power to the blower (which uses the factory plug!) and connect the bowden cable that was once connected to the factory fresh air blower. This unfortunately became an oversight issue that was not explained in the instructions. Had I known ahead of time that this was going to happen I would have removed the bracket off the fresh air blower and installed it on the new blower instead of trying to use the one supplied by the kit. The later year cars like mine (1987) must have used a different part number clip to hold the bowden cable in place. The two photos below show what the stock bracket looks like on mine and what the classic retrofit one looks like. I decided to use zip ties and a piece of flat bar to hold it in place temporarily until I can get the correct clip. Commissioning took a while on Will's car as he troubleshooted some electrical issues with a dying battery and a problem with a fuseholder he added. See his thread for the full details. The system is now charged and running great. Will says: On the night before the 8hr trek to Helen, GA I decided to do one last check on my pressures and look over everything. The system would not power on at all. I freaked out and started checking over all my electrical. I'll post it down below but we discovered that our 80amp fuse had melted It was not blown, but just melted and fused to the holder. I quickly made a last minute run to a few auto parts stores and grabbed a new/different fuse holder and fuse along with crimps. THIS WAS A GAME CHANGER! Apparently the fuse holder itself was defective and had a poor connection internally which was causing poor power to the compressor/ECU. Once we reset the power to the ECU and got the new fuse holder in place, the system kicked ass! We were cranking out 40 degree vent temps! All in all, I love this system and it's potential. I'm still working out all the programming to be dialed in to fit my preferences here in sunny/humid FL but I'm very happy with the outcome! The car made the trek to Helen and back.
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