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Air Conditioning Upgrade

I have worked with air conditioning before, but find myself in a place where I have never done hands-on upgrading.

The problem is my 97 Dodge van, 318 cid. Cooling is a bit marginal. It has only the front unit.

I have tinted the side windows for driver and passenger, and that really helped significantly.

The air conditioner has been checked, fully discharged and then recharged, etc. and seems to be working within specifications.

On shady days, it can freeze you out, but in the hot Texas sun, it can be warmish.

I have thought about trying to retrofit this van with a rear unit, either new or scavenged from a junker if I can find one.

Is this a reasonable project, or is it likely to run more money than it is worth?

The van has about 75,000 miles now, is in great shape, and I see no reason to trade it while it is in its most productive years.

Reply to
Larry Smith
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You're trying to cool what becomes an oven in the sun. You may want to pull the headliner and have some *good* insulation (house type!) installed below the roof panel.

"Working within specifications" is a heck of a moving target, because the performance specs are wide enough to drive...well, to drive a Dodge van through.

R134a is not as good in the high-demand situations (real hot days, slow or zero vehicle forward speed) as R12 was. How to improve system performance depends on the specific type of system you've got (VOV, TXV?) and the conditions in which you find performance inadequate. If it's the stuck-in-traffic situation, a large and effective electric condenser fan will improve matters considerably.

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, searchable used auto parts nationwide.

It will involve a lot of parts and fairly considerable labor, that's for sure...

DS

Reply to
Daniel J. Stern

It should be quite easy to add. I did this exact thing on a 76 Blazer using some left over parts and it worked fine. Basically all you need is any evap and blower package that you can get to fit somewhere in the back. If you don't care what it looks like you could even just stick an old underdash unit back there. Then run refrigerant hose from it up to the engine compartment. You will need to add "T's" to your current hi and lo pressure hoses to connect the rear system. Since it's 134A you should have proper ends put on to connect the T to rather then just barbed fittings if you want to try and keep if from having a slow leak. But cutting the hoses and sticking barbed T's in would work, it just might leak slowly. Connect it all up, pull a vacuum, and charge it.

Reply to
AZGuy

Thanks to all who contributed. Luckily, the Labor Day weekend was cloudy here, and the temperatures were less than about 90F. Nearly froze me out.

I think there may be a lot of performance out of the fan retrofit at little expense.

But I may keep my eyes open at the junkyards to see if a custom van with rear conditioner turns up.

Thanks again.

Reply to
Larry Smith

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