DPD A/C unit, can't find comparison

[Tbob]

There is a write-up "DPD air conditioning for the VW Bus" in the Bay window stickies that I found highly informative. The writer adapted a later Sanden Compressor and Honda pully with a thin serpentine belt and it all seems to work well. I have never seen that style of DPD underdash system, but I like the idea of accessing your fuses without dropping the unit. Or extending the wires and relocating the fuse box. One of the reasons I have never installed mine.
I wonder if yours is an early version? The chrome trim was more in style in the late 60's early 70's than it was a decade later, although the busses themselves never had any dashboard chrome embellishment throughout the run. Could be that DPD was responding to the prevailing American styling of the day?!
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1969 Deluxe, owned since 1973
1973 Westfalia, owned since 1983
1980 Westfalia, watercooled conversion
1985 Westfalia, stock!
1986 Westfakia, Audi I-4 conversion
A couple of trucks and a couple of Jeeps

[vwmaniaman]

I have one of that same DPD units in my attic. It was intended for my 1975 Westy. I bought it as a spare for my 1968 bus when I lived in Arizona. It always worked very well and with the dual fans the passenger could stay a little warmer. Mine had the condenser coil below it under the front floor. It was a major current pull on my 30 amp generator on my 1600 motor.
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Working on a VW is like fun with a friend!
65 Beetle
75 Westy "Pumpkin Van"
86 Westy "Brown Betty"
87 Cabrio

[SGKent]

[metahacker]

hey @badstuw - any updates?
any one have any pics of this particular unit to share ?

i am also in san diego and recently acquired the same unit ... missing 1 of the vents though .. will probably have to design something to print on my 3d printer ..

i'm curious what this thing looks like installed, i've never seen one fitted ... and i'm not quite at the stage where im going to pull my parcel trays off for the test fit ..

it's interesting that it's one continuous evaporator core inside of the entire unit .. the other ones i've seen used 2 smaller cores, or 1 core on the passenger side vented over to the driver ..

i want to say that that the BTU capacity vs total size on this seems to be much higher than the other bus under-dash evaps i've seen (besides the Ice Auto Air one from San Diego...it seems to be ALL evap core in there.... but i've been trying to get Robert to sell me one of those for 2+ years....) ... it's also quite a bit narrower, overall.

i can't seem to figure out the details on this thing .. the guys at Gilmore told me that DPD made this because they wanted it for their own personal buses ... i believe it was offered pretty late in the game - 79 maybe?

[metahacker]

Here's a pic of mine taken apart.... I have to say, this is a really interesting unit.

The small external appearance of the unit is misleading.
The evap core inside is massive.

When I asked the Gilmore guys about the capacity they said the single evap is similar to what the total system size would be in a front/rear evap setup.

My speculation is that this was the final DPD revision for 1979.

EDIT: fixed image link

[webwalker]

[badstuw]

[69BahamaYellow]

The Evaporator core in the overhead DPD system measures to 464 cubic inches. It’s big, and yours appears to be similar in size. I have no idea what the refrigerant mass flow rates through the old York compressors was, and considering the fact this evaporator is a single path tube and fin design, And you will probably be running 134A instead of R12 refrigerant (as it was designed for), there’s no way to know what the BTU capacity actually is, so just measuring volume is really the best comparison you can make. I can cool my whole bus to low 70’sF in 100+F heat in direct sunlight. It takes about 30,000 BTU to do that, so my best guess is that’s the capacity of that big evaporator. Put the biggest one you can fit in yours that will match up to the compressor you choose. If your evaporator is too big for your compressor, it may not stay fully flooded with liquid refrigerant, and won’t be as efficient as a smaller one.