Tag: 32 build

’32 Update: More Air Conditioning (article 27, archived)

More Air Conditioning
A/C hoses rank right up there with brake lines on my “things I don’t like looking at” list. What else is on the list, you might ask? Mold, pouty faces, and melting snow are all fighting their way to the top. Anyways, I tried pretty hard to come up with a way of dressing down the hoses. The first way was using Vintage Air’s EZ Clip hose and fittings for the sheer girth reduction. The second was to try to make the zinc plated fittings look a little less shiny. Follow along!

Here’s what the fittings look like out of the box. There are two O rings and two barbs on the main fitting, along with a groove that a special zig zag cage snaps into. Two special spring clamps fit into the zigs of the cage and secure it all together.


You need a special set of pliers to snap the rings in place. A really nice feature is that you can get an amazing crimp without taking the hoses out of your garage. Get them clocked in the right direction and snap the rings on. That’s all it takes.

This is #10 hose!

On the ’32, I’ve used shrink wrap to cover the hose as well as the fittings. This makes it consistently matte, and looks somewhat like a snake which just swallowed an air conditioning fitting. [I have since removed the heat shrink from the lines… I decided I liked the industrial look of the clamps.]

I installed the drier in the trunk to save space under the dash. It was a little extra #6 hose, but not enough to notice a performance drop especially since the cabin is so small. The trinary safety switch is mounted right to the drier. To mount the drier, I just cut a tube to the distance between the tabs on the mounting bracket and welded two 1/4-20 threaded bungs to that tube. After drilling and countersinking holes to match, that’s all it took. The bolt heads will be hidden by the access panel.

This hose is so nice to work with! It makes running lines under the dash super easy because it will bend in such a tight radius.