By Fred Duplechin
Have you thought about
installing an air conditioner in your car?
It’s South Louisiana, surely you have.
Read on to see if you are ready for this.
I made a cool move this
fall. I installed an aftermarket a/c
package in my ‘55 hardtop. I looked at
the top vendors - Vintage Air of Texas and Classic Auto Air of Florida and
chose Vintage because they had a specific compressor/pulley mounting for the
Studebaker 259-289 V8. I later found
out that Vintage contracted with SDC Board Member Milton Jones on the
design. Milton has a Studebaker
specialty shop - J & N Auto Air in Harlingen Texas.
If I was going to put
air-conditioning, I wanted the whole tamale - cool, heat and defrost. There was some question as to whether
Vintage’s Slim-Line 11300-VUZ-A evaporator unit would fit. It does.
Vintage also offered the Sanden rear discharge R134A compressor. This is a must with the Lowey Coupe’s low
hood profile.
The package didn’t look particularly
intimidating when it arrived, but the challenges quickly materialized. Mounting the evaporator under
the dash was simple and straight forward.
The challenge came in measuring and retrofitting heater and refrigerant
lines behind the unit and through the firewall. Smaller, cool only, units may be simpler and easier to mount
because longer lines offer more flexibility in mounting. You must make your own lines with the
fittings provided in the package. Take
care in keeping the angles right in having the fittings fastened to the hoses.
More challenges under the
hood. the early partial flow oil filter
must be moved from the passenger side of the oil filler tube to the driver’s
side. Seems simple enough, but space
becomes very critical and I ended up doing it 2 or 3 times. So too with the compressor and idler pulley
brackets. I had to bend a bracket
slightly for it to align with a mounting hole, but the final fit and alignment
were good.
The condenser coil sent
originally was way off, designed for old Ford vertical radiators. The correct coil for the Studebaker is
Vintage’s 03704-OVA, but they were out of stock with vague time lines due to
Hurricane Katrina’s disruption of the Port of the port of New Orleans. Classic Auto Air did have a 12”x24”
microtube unit (model 11-1015) that worked.
Again, the fit is close.
Vintage’s compressor/idler
pulley kit also contains a 2 grove crankshaft pulley and longer mounting flange
bolts. Since it has 2 groves, I
“assumed” it replaced the original. As
I soon discovered, the grooves didn’t align with the alternator. The new pulley supplements the original
pulley, so I did that operation twice too, including finding taps to re-thread
the crankshaft.
Wiring
the unit and running vacuum lines was not difficult.
A final disappointment was
the cooling fan. I decided to order a
special, high quality/low amperage unit from 5th Avenue Antique Auto
Parts. After blowing several fuses I
ended up buying another fan from a local auto parts store thinking that the fan
was defective. It turned out that 5th
Avenue sent a 6-volt unit by mistake.
The unit works well and my
wife and I are more eager than ever to go cruisin’ in the warm weather. So far, no overheating.
Visit the Vintage Air
website (www.vintageair.com) and
take a look at the “Cool 200” video.
It’s the story of Jack Chisenhall’s ‘53 Lowey Coupe that holds the
Bonneville speed record for air-conditioned cars (219 MPH). It’s quite a story and it’s not surprising
that Jack chose the sleek Studebaker to
make his history-making run. Hat’s off
to Vintage Air for sponsoring it!