The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area The HiPo Shop another a/c question

what did guys do before vintage air started making expensive a/c units (beside roll the windows) Surely there is a junkyard unit that could be adapted into a 40 pickup. BTW- my kid is now doing a 53 so I have the same question for that truck.

Hi Rod, greetings from McCook!

I have been studying this situation myself and the limiting factor that I have found is the evaporator and the fan/ducting to route the air. A cheap retrofit (at least for me) would be to use an evaporator from a 40-50-60 series John Deere tractor. This evaporater is about 5" square and about 30" long. I would mount the evaporater and fans under the seat and make some ducts in the floor board to route the cool air up to the dash. The 70 series John Deere tractors use a setup like this and it works good.

The hardest thing about mounting the evaporator under the dash is the lack of room. If you get an evaporator small enough to fit under the dash, will it be big enough to keep you cool? I need to go somewhere and look at a vintage air setup installed--I have never seen one in person.

I had part of the A/C apart on an 88 GMC pickup one time and that set-up might work under the dash. It is a lot smaller that the A/C units on the 70's-80-s Chevy pickups.

I have seen some of those aftermarket A/C kits, they really look cheap! The black plastic case doesn't even fit together right. I seen a guy at a swapmeet selling the whole A/C units from Honda CIVIC's. They were all add on units back in the late 80's early 90's. They were really small and all you needed was some type of fan to blow through it. The Honda we had (88 CIVIC) had A/C add at the factory. All they did was remove a section from the heater and add the A/C unit. You may want to expand your search to imports as well. Joe

here's a few things to consider. yer honda probably didn't come with factory air-yeah i know, but most all were installed by a sub-contractor working for the factory, or the dealer. so were alot of chrysler products. everybody thinks of vintage air first. try 4 seasons or factory air inc. think they got a website. a word about junkyards-there's a reason why they are called that. yeah i know lots of "good" parts, but not for a/c stuff unless you find one with the system sealed with at least some charge still in it. think the guys will agree the 2 worst enemies of the a/c system are dirt and moisture, and it don't take much to screw things up royally. i've seen guys spend more money trying to hack something together than if they just went out and bought new-------plus the hassle. did a 34 **** street rod last week for a guy. he got creative with the condenser to make it fit. to make the car cool he kept adding freon without a guage set and toasted the compressor. (a nice polished aluminum one).he comes to me and i find one that works from a buddy, install a new comp. and the condenser and he's a happy boy today----all except for paying me all that money. good quality underdash units are out there, and cheaper than vintage air

We have an 88 and an 87 Acura, made by Honda. both have AC. These units don't even cool the little cars let alone a truck. They are way undersized.

At the time it had something to do with the import restrictions on japanese cars. They could import more cars if they installed the AC's here. They are junk.

The cool setup (pun) back in those days was the little fan, mounted on the dash. If you were really cool ('nother pun), you had an oscillating fan- to keep your date cool too!