Project C4, 85 Corvette

[Steve85]

I don't drive this enough mostly because with a heavily raked windshield, glass top, and all glass rear hatch, it is a blistering hot greenhouse without AC. Basically a Jetsons car.



I've had a Holley bracket for a while now that allows the old GM R4 style radial compressor to be mounted on an LS. A few things had me putting it off - 

1. The area it sits in was already pretty crowded with heater lines and I wasn't sure the compressor bracket would fit with modifying the water pump to change the heater core outlets
   
2. I would need custom lines made 
   
3. The bracket did not fit my slightly older style R4 compressor (it's made for slightly updated versions of my compressor) 
   
4. I have very little AC experience.
   
5. And just being lazy about it...
   

Decided the other day though it was time to take this box of cold air and get it installed.

 

First issue was the compressor didn't quite fit the bracket so I needed to grind away a very small section. Not sure what the "boss" is there for, but it's not on the 91+ compressors.



With that out of the way I was able to install the compressor in the bracket and test fit to the car for belt alignment and see exactly what I had to do to the water lines. The green line I think is going to be OK, it fits under the bracket. I think I can make the red one work by shortening the hose piece that comes up from the water pump. It's funky because the inlet to the pipe points up but the hose is coming from below it. Just needs to be a "tighter" install.



I dropped it in for a test fit and it does look like I can squeeze the second water line underneath the bracket. This is a pretty big deal for the install since removing and modifying the pump was going to be a big PIA. Belt alignment also looks good so I think I'm good to go with this compressor. 

With it dropped in, I started planning for the lines I need to make. 

The large line from the accumulator to the evaporator will work so I only need to make two lines, the line from compressor to condenser (orange) and another from the accumulator to the compressor. For the comp to accum line, I have 3 possible paths, red, blue and yellow listed in order of preference. (long live MS Paint!)



I'm building out my shopping list through Vintage Air and Nostalgic AC. I'll end up ordering like $250 worth of fittings and only using about $50-75 worth. A lot like a home plumbing project but these stores aren't right up the road so a little overkill to hopefully not get stuck.

Hopefully get everything in this week / weekend then I'll need to figure out the wiring.