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Vic...There's a lot to this story but on the crimps, they are not the prettiest with that crimper. One of the crimps failed right away - its hard to get the crimper really square in-situ and I think I over-pressured that one. That was a low point in this project. No problems after that and I think a big part of crimping success seems to be in using the reduced OD barrier hose and fittings - less hose wall thickness makes for a stronger crimp. Hose is more flexible/forgiving too.
On the one crimp that failed ... it was the one where I had to crimp the small, high side, hard line that is right under the water reservoir. After that I had to improvise or pull the hard line completely out of the car. I dreaded that and was trying to get up for an engine pull but decided to try a T-bolt Hail Mary first. I'm not proud of it but it has held perfectly and I have over 500 COOL miles now without a hitch.
I used only 11oz of R134 and 3 oz of Pag46. Since the physical capacity of the system is unknown (due to after-market PF condenser) I had to do the slow fill while monitoring outlet temps routine. I had a faulty thermometer but learned that later. So I'm monitoring and filling and its feeling really good on a 85f day. When the outlet temp thermometer dropped to 30f, I said - Damn it, thats good enough and stopped filling even though I had only used 1 small can of R134. You might imagine how happy I was right then.
I drove around expecting problems but none happened. Later, I got another thermometer to try and figure out why I wasn't triggering the freeze switch. With that thermometer I was reading 42f. So I haven't made my goal yet but I'm very happy with my conversion to 134. Here's a few pics from my notes... Bruce
PS my Chinese, PF condenser is 21 X 12" (same size as OEM, also much lighter).
So, using reduced OD barrier hose makes a better crimp on the factory hard lines?
I think reduced OD hose crimps better in general. If I had a $18000 crimping machine, it might not matter. Just my opinion.
Side note: The master-cool style crimper comes with dies some are for reduced OD hose and some for regular. For #6 size hose (small), the only die set that I have is for reduced OD hose. So I had to go that way on the small hoses (to and from the filter dryer). That led me to using reduced OD hose for the other sizes too. When I had my crimp failure on that small diameter hose, it occurred to me that a small t-bolt would put big pressure on the hose. If it had been a regular thickness hose or even a bigger diameter hose, the t-bolts probably wouldn't have worked.
You only ended up using one can of 134a??
Yea, I will probably go back and add some to improve it. I want better outlet temps but 42 is adequate at least till I get my other p-car's AC working. Also, my idling pressures were 40/180 and I was a little nervous how high they would climb.
Where you're now using t-bolt clamps, would the crimp have been successful if you would have used reduced OD barrier hose?
I DID use reduced OD barrier hose on all rubber hose replacements. Somebody will probably say there is a downside to using it but I don't know what that would be.
More hose pics. Hose routing trials I just cut the brackets by hand, did I mention the PF condenser is super light?. That #8 might be a typo, maybe should be #6
Not sure if I should resurrect this old thread, or start another one, but this seemed logical to post here. I'm in the process of redo-ing all the rubber lines for the AC on an 88 turbo. Also retrofitted The parallel flow condenser. The issue I am having is the factory peanut-style compressor fittings, which are actually installed on a compressor manifold that seems to be unique to these cars. The fittings are similar to other Euro applications, but NOT the same, and I can find no viable replacement. Mine are no longer usable as there are places on the short hard line section that were abraded and thin. I have sourced multiple fittings that appeared close, but the o-ring "snout" was different. Anyone know of a solution? I tried to find a different manifold style to get to standard o-ring style fittings, but the Denso compressor bracket geometry is an issue. I'm getting frustrated. This is part of a pretty comprehensive resto-mod so trying to not cut corners. Not looking for factory pieces, but trying to find a good clean way to do this. The plan is to reuse the factory hard-lines along the firewall and braze o-ring adapters to them near the drier.
09-08-2018, 04:20 PM
