As of two nights ago, I HAVE AC!!!! I was really nervous that the 1993 R134 system I put in the car would have issues, but Gary offered to vacuum and charge the system, So I swung by his place Wednesday night and we took a lash at it. (Peep that Sportwagon
)
The system vacuumed down to 26 inches and sat there for about half an hour with the pump off, so he proceeded to measure out and fill the system with the appropriate amount of refrigerant. We fired up the system, and it cooled for a minute, then warm air out of the vents. After racking our brains and a couple phone calls, we were confident the system worked, and were hoping for air flow issue. Sure enough the heater control valve doesn't turn off all the way, as soon as I clamped the hose shut the vent temps dropped immediately. Success!
This was after a short drive from Harbor Freight at 90 degrees ambiant (to buy this dumb thermometer) I am going to help Gary with a project at his house, and if we have time I'm hoping we can throw the gauges back on to verify everything is G2G.
My new heater control
I also ordered all new silicone heater and radiator hoses, a STS machining SS pass through, and also an Europartshouse heater valve kit (that hasn't arrived yet)
Truthfully, The "build" stage of this car is winding down. I plan to continue finalizing my aluminum door card file, and work through a couple bugs here and there. I would also like to really clean the engine bay, I'm not going crazy shaving and whatnot, but cleaner, fresh paint on some stuff. Also the blower motor is noisier than I would like, and that may need to be changed sooner rather than later. I would like to find some
very light window tint to cut some UV and such. But we shall see.