Re: 500 Caddy into El Camino
The drivetrain portion of the mockup is done and the El Camino is back on the ground with the hood back on. With the stock Monte Carlo hood I’m able to run both a 1” spacer and 2” aircleaner. In spite of some things being a bit snug, everything looks like it’s going to be very serviceable and relatively easy to get to.
I’ve moved on to the Hot Rod Air AC/Heat/Defrost unit I picked up a while back. I had heard good things about their units and customer service. My dealing with them were not real satisfactory however (a lot of run around about when it would be shipped etc) and I finally bought a unit from one of their dealers. I have since heard they have gone out of business (leaving some of their customers hanging on stuff they had paid for or control panels they had sent in for modifications). Hopefully the quality of the units is as good as I have heard and I get a good service life out if it. I have checked out the electrical and vacuum systems on the unit and everything seems to work well.
The unit I bought is the biggest one they make and in retrospect one of the smaller ones might have fit a bit better as it is a bit snug. The first thing I did was get slid in about where I wanted with the dash still installed doing a little trimming as I went. I will end up having to modify the inside of my glove box a bit and will lose some storage space, but since I added a console it really doesn’t matter.
I then removed the dash and built some simple brackets to hold the unit.
I really hadn’t planned it, but the location where I the unit ended up being directly under the existing ducting system for the dash vents and defroster.
Rather than re-invent the wheel and run a bunch of flexible tubing I decided to tie into the existing system. This involved some re-shaping. I formed what I needed to with metal tape, which is fairly easy to work with and stiff enough to hold its shape so fiberglass can be spread on it.
Once I had the shape I needed I was just add a couple layers of fiberglass. To tie into the defroster ducts, I ended up building an enclosure completely over the outlets on the HRA units. I didn’t spend a whole lot of time making it real smooth on the outside as once it’s installed for the final time nobody will ever see it again LOL.
To seal the unit to the ducting I used a piece of soft foam. It compresses very nicely and does a good job.
The last thing I did was to reinstall the dash and check the air flow through the ducts. I did a direct comparison between this system and the wife’s 84 El Camino with factory AC. The airflow thru the dash vents is at least as good as the factory setup and the amount of floor air flow is better. The defrosters do not flow as well as the factory setup but it should still be sufficient.
The next thing I want to work on is trying to make the unit work with the factory controls. I had originally figured on using the controls provided with the HRA unit but the more I look at them I’d really prefer to keep the factory controls. I need to track down the color coding for the vacuum lines on the original controls but looking at it should not be too major of a job.
The drivetrain portion of the mockup is done and the El Camino is back on the ground with the hood back on. With the stock Monte Carlo hood I’m able to run both a 1” spacer and 2” aircleaner. In spite of some things being a bit snug, everything looks like it’s going to be very serviceable and relatively easy to get to.
I’ve moved on to the Hot Rod Air AC/Heat/Defrost unit I picked up a while back. I had heard good things about their units and customer service. My dealing with them were not real satisfactory however (a lot of run around about when it would be shipped etc) and I finally bought a unit from one of their dealers. I have since heard they have gone out of business (leaving some of their customers hanging on stuff they had paid for or control panels they had sent in for modifications). Hopefully the quality of the units is as good as I have heard and I get a good service life out if it. I have checked out the electrical and vacuum systems on the unit and everything seems to work well.
The unit I bought is the biggest one they make and in retrospect one of the smaller ones might have fit a bit better as it is a bit snug. The first thing I did was get slid in about where I wanted with the dash still installed doing a little trimming as I went. I will end up having to modify the inside of my glove box a bit and will lose some storage space, but since I added a console it really doesn’t matter.
I then removed the dash and built some simple brackets to hold the unit.
I really hadn’t planned it, but the location where I the unit ended up being directly under the existing ducting system for the dash vents and defroster.
Rather than re-invent the wheel and run a bunch of flexible tubing I decided to tie into the existing system. This involved some re-shaping. I formed what I needed to with metal tape, which is fairly easy to work with and stiff enough to hold its shape so fiberglass can be spread on it.
Once I had the shape I needed I was just add a couple layers of fiberglass. To tie into the defroster ducts, I ended up building an enclosure completely over the outlets on the HRA units. I didn’t spend a whole lot of time making it real smooth on the outside as once it’s installed for the final time nobody will ever see it again LOL.
To seal the unit to the ducting I used a piece of soft foam. It compresses very nicely and does a good job.
The last thing I did was to reinstall the dash and check the air flow through the ducts. I did a direct comparison between this system and the wife’s 84 El Camino with factory AC. The airflow thru the dash vents is at least as good as the factory setup and the amount of floor air flow is better. The defrosters do not flow as well as the factory setup but it should still be sufficient.
The next thing I want to work on is trying to make the unit work with the factory controls. I had originally figured on using the controls provided with the HRA unit but the more I look at them I’d really prefer to keep the factory controls. I need to track down the color coding for the vacuum lines on the original controls but looking at it should not be too major of a job.
