Aircon Hose Route??

[Chris Liddiard]

I am sure that there is a obvious answer to this question but I wondered if anyone had any experiance on the best route for the Air con hoses from the front to the rear of the car??

I have the body off, tanks in & wondered if you try and run them over the top of the tanks in some form. Surely you dont take them through the cabin?.

Any advice would be great.

thanks

Chris

[Dimi]

Hi Chris

What I did in mine was to run hard insulated copper piping from the rear to the front through the transmission tunnel and put fittings on the ends to take rubber hoses so there would be no need to access the tunnell in the future.

All the rubber hoses which could need replacing are only in the front clip and in the engine bay at the rear and easily accessible.

Any thing through the tunnel is run in hard lines and wont need future accessing.

Dimi

[Peter D]

Chris, similar to Dimi's approach, I ran insulated s/s pipes thru the tunnel & put screw-type a/c fittings on the ends to take the compression fittings on the end of the rubber hoses. (With the DRB, there is simply no room to run the pipes along the tanks).

At the back, I had 90deg fittings on the ends of the s/s pipes & just looped the rubber hoses around to clear the pulleys & get to the a/c compressor.

At the front, I brought the a/c rubber tubes up to bulkhead fittings in the bulkhead above the passenger's feet. I also brought the 2 heater hoses up to similar bulkhead fittings in the same area. (The heater hoses are attached to 45deg spigots on the front ends of the main cooling pipes & simply rely on the "suck & blow" effect of the coolant passing the 45deg spigots - works very well, & none of the problems of trying to get heater hoses back to the conventional take-off points on the water pump).

Inside the cabin, I have 2 a/c rubber hoses coming from the bulkhead fittings to the a/c evaporator, & the 2 rubber heater hoses coming from the bulkhead fittings to the heater coil spigots on the Sanden a/c evaporator / heater / fan unit behind the dash in front of the passenger.

My only criticism of the setup is the weakness of the fan in the Sanden evap unit - its ok in terms of keeping things cool (even on 35deg days), but it lacks the oomph to give you that nice blast of chilled air when you want it.

There seems to be no problem associated with running insulated pipes in the tunnel with the coolant pipes - the air coming out of the a/c is freezing cold - it just that there is not that much of it !

Kind Regards,

Peter D.

[Lambo]

Hi Peterd , would you happen to remember the size of the copper pipe you used, most systems seem to have one pipe bigger than the other, or is there an industry standard size to use , so that the rubber hoses can be crimped on.

regards
Lambo

[Dimi]

Hi Lambo

It was on my car that used the copper pipe and the size of pipe was determined by the size of the fittings on the aircon system as advised by my aircon guy.

My aircon guy told me what was required and where the pipes had to run and gave me the standard fittings he would be swaging onto the rubber hoses and I just ran the pipes and silver soldered the compression fittings onto the pipes and then he just made the rubber hoses to suit.

Dimi

[John]

Chris,

I had a hell of a time solving this problem. My tunnel was crowded and I couldn't put anything else in there.

After months of agonizing, I finally came up with an inelegant but workable solution. I removed the heater hoses that ran along the right tank and replaced them with copper tubing. That freed up a lot of space over the right tank. I then pulled the rubber A/C hoses through the gap above the right tank. I had to use a lot of grease to get the hoses to slide thru but finally succeeded.

It is not the optimal option but I had limited choices!

Good luck.

John

[Chris Liddiard]

Thanks All,

Great feedback and has given me many ideas.

Cheers

Chris