Tag: vintage air

D100 Build: A/C & Heater Hoses

I mounted the drier on the driver side inner fender, near the front. It’s tucked out of the way and offers an easy route for the -6 hose coming out of the condenser.
Doing the robot.
I don’t have any of the hoses tied together yet, but this will be the route they’ll take. Missing from this photo is the heater hose from the water pump.

 

II Much makes these handy anodized aluminum adapters to go from #10 heater hose to -10 EZ-Clip. I used a small section of rubber hose off the water pump, and then will use the Vintage Air reduced diameter hose to match the A/C hoses.
Check out the YouTube video on how to make the connections. It’s really, really easy!
The II Much bulkhead system is one of my favourite parts on this whole truck. I have one more hose to run, then I’ll be able to install the hose separators to really clean it up. It’s designed to fit the EZ Clip hoses, so you’ll have to decide whether you want to run normal heater hose from the water pump & intake up to the bulkhead, then use the adapters to switch to EZ Clip and go through the bulkhead, or run EZ Clip hose all the way from the evaporator to the engine. If you do the latter (my method), keep in mind that the heater control valve needs to be plumbed in the line coming from the intake, but the valve is designed to use normal heater hose. You’ll need to use an adapter before the control valve to convert from -10 to standard heater hose.
I thought there was going to be a fair bit of room under the dash! Get everything mounted that could possibly be an interference point. You can see the charge port on the -10 hose – check with the people who will be charging your system to see if they are ok with having one charge port inside the vehicle and one in the engine compartment.

Here’s a video showing the process of making a connection with the EZ-Clip system:

 

’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.