Woohoo!!! Pair of Bilsteins I ordered a couple of months ago made it to our front gate. Now I have the complete set. They will be replacing the red Koni set.
One out of two distractions completed. FrankenDeere is being recalcitrant. A couple more days...
With the 100+ degree heat we've seen recently, my thoughts turn to the planning of ice cold AC for this beast. I keep looking at the Vintage Air parts. This car needs to be able to run cool with serious AC.
Hey-- for me, Vintage Air is THE place online for A/C components. We bought a new parallel flow condenser for Mike's car from VA and it fit just fine, tilted back a bit at the top. They also have excellent technical information on the website, and a ton of accessories. We almost went with a Mini-Gen II heat/cool unit, but decided to stay with the OEM Tropic Air components because they checked out good. The system works great here in KY summers, but you might want to re-think your application out west there. Mike's running a Sanden SD-8 compressor, being a '86 model.
One out of two distractions completed. FrankenDeere is being recalcitrant. A couple more days...
With the 100+ degree heat we've seen recently, my thoughts turn to the planning of ice cold AC for this beast. I keep looking at the Vintage Air parts. This car needs to be able to run cool with serious AC.
I suggest you figure on getting new hoses made up, using the originals as a pattern for fitting orientation and overall length. The Sanden will obviously need different fitting types/orientation, as compared to the old York recip compressor. You probably are replacing the receiver/drier also, with an aftermarket unit. Make sure you have the trinary switches also on the receiver/drier, giving you both over and under-pressure protection for your compressor.
The entire system will be new. I'll probably spend more on the AC upgrade then I did on the car...in fact I know I will. But given that it'll be pretty much a daily driver, plus I'm trying to prep it for a 6,500 mile trip, I think it will make it a much more usable vehicle.
Given my current progress, however, I probably won't get to it until the fall...of 2019...LOL
I've been reading the many AC threads. It appears that the stock fan installation may not be up to the task, so perhaps a modern fan installation would be a good idea. A Vintage Air system with a dual pass condenser, new Sanden compressor, new receiver/dryer and hoses.
The GTV6 has made it back to the top of the task priority list as the "Silver Pearl" (pirate ship of a 2000 Dodge Caravan) has started puking coolant all over the place. It's undoubtedly getting ready to slip beneath the waves. Might be a blown headgasket...and I'm not doing that on this vehicle.
Back to our regularly scheduled program. Spent the weekend finishing FrankenDeere and threw in the towel on the Pearl after 8 hours of effort today. I banished both projects from the workshop resulting in this:
Tomorrow, I'll stop by AAA to get a couple of new travel permits. If I can get the brakes r&r'd and settle the suspension so it doesn't look like it has a hitch in its giddy-up, I hope to try to get to smog this weekend. One issue is that, for some reason, it's forgotten how to start in the last 45-60 days while it was sitting outside.
If it's not one thing, it's the same thing over and over.
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