TheSamba.com :: View topic

Tue Feb 23, 2021 7:07 pm

Trying to get my 74 412 wagon on the road. Common stuff, removing the progressive weber and replacing with duals, new tires, wheel cylinders, brakes, new upholstery,replacing thr aluminum foil and pad plus carpet in back, new door panels, just trying to make a decent driver out of it.
It has the dealer installed a.c. unit and to me it looks like a dinosaur and no way to get underneath the dash i was just looking at the fuse box today and even its hard to access.

Question is, if it was yours, would YOU keep it.

Im thinkng about just removing the entire unit, compressor and pully, under dash unit, condenser and all hoses and wires. Storing it in a box for the next owner.
Im 77 years old so im sure there will be a new owner.

Tue Feb 23, 2021 10:17 pm

I planned hard for years to try to work out a better than stock AC system.

I have a pretty nice design thats easier to fab that would be using an overhead arch shaped unit with hoses running up the C pillars from the back under the headliner and padding. It would have used a evaporator core from a Golf. Easy to get. It would have had a nice flat fan similar to under the dash with two round vents for the front and two for the back.....plus a map light! :D

I even worked out a design with two small condensers connected by a hose...one on each side in those spaces below the headlights and behind the lower valance on each of the spare tire well.

I planned to have the hoses made. No issues.

It came down to a few years back looking for a compressor that is modern. More modern than those round Sanden compressors.

I figured out just how extremely killer modern compressors are....variable rate swash plate with 5-7 cylinders. They automatically self bleed and adjust pressure to keep cooling with no load at idle and at highway speeds.

I found that bleed valve could be made to be controlled by a simple knob on the dash. Turn it up high and get the car cool....then dial it back to maintain. In traffic...dial it back to an idle....but it still cools. On the highway ...dial it in the middle . Great cooling and economy. No need for the electronics of the system it came from.

This is why modern compressors...do not take even a fraction of the HP that old compressors do...to run very cool. This is why they are damn expensive.......and ....none of them turn in the right direction to be able to install . It was going to take a bracket and funky hoses and...and...and.

And then I realized that I am so used to hot and cold weather....that in in my Golf with killer AC....I rarely use it even in Oklahoma weather. The only time I use it is when someone else in the car needs it or I am driving and on a conference call and cannot deal with the noise of open windows and cracked sunroof.

And then I realized that I drove my 411's and 412's ...close to a million miles through Texas, Oklahoma and Georgia summer heat....from 1978 to 2003...and it was not any big deal.

I decided to scrap the idea of putting in AC...which hacks up the car...is not needed (it would be lovely for defrosting....but I lived fine without that too)...and just spend teh money on making it back into a nice driver.

And I hate that under dash unit. Ther are too many things to work on under there...like your brake master cylinder and fuse box. Ray