Chillin' Louie (Part I: Introduction)

Introduction

As many of you folks know, I'm kind of a nut about air conditioning in my vintage cars. I realize that many find that funny since I live not in Phoenix or Yuma or Miami but in relatively temperate Boston MA, but it DOES get hot and sticky up here in the summer, it does so more than the three or for days a year people sometimes assume, and we already have a shortened driving season due to winter.

As I say in the introduction to my book Just Needs a Recharge: The Hack Mechanic Guide to Vintage Air Conditioning, this all started when Maire Anne and I were living in Austin 1982 through mid-1984. I'd bought my first 2002, but then found another one that had a/c (the Behr system). Unfortunately, it didn't work. A guy I worked with in my engineering job was a first-rate shade-tree mechanic whose expertise included a/c. He hooked up his gauges and diagnosed my 2002's a/c problem as a clogged expansion valve, so I tore the Behr evaporator assembly out, opened it up, and replaced the expansion valve. My friend then evacuated and recharged the system for me. Over the years, I applied that same paradigm to several of my daily drivers, paying a shop to diagnose a/c issues, replacing the parts myself, then taking the car back and paying them for evacuation and recharge.

In 1999, I took the big plunge and retrofitted a/c into my 1973 E9 3.0CSi. I worked with Bob Poggi at ICE AC (yes, the same guy who now sells a 2002 a/c package, including an evaporator assembly that's patterned after the Clardy unit). Bob sent me a Seltec rotary-style compressor, a bracket to mount it to the M30 engine, a new serpentine-flow condenser, a fan, and a generic evaporator assembly. It didn't fit inside the original non-a/c center console, so, concerned that it was going to look like poorly-integrated crap, I sent it back. I then procured an original E9 Behr evaporator assembly out of a rotted car, and had Bob work with a tube-and-fin shop to custom-build a four-row evaporator core that was dimensionally identical to the original 3-row core in the original Behr system. Whether it improved cooling any was questionable.

The very stock-looking retrofitted a/c evaporator assembly and console in my 1973 E9 3.0CS

But I installed it all, then took the car to a hose fabrication shop in Boston to have the hoses made. For those of you who knew Boston 20 years ago, the shop was "Ellis the Rim Man" on Comm Ave, and Ed Ellis himself fabricated the hoses by the curb on Comm Ave. But more to the point, I was transfixed by his crimping on one end, cutting the hose longer than it needed to be, putting it through whatever holes it needed to pass through, threading the other fitting onto whatever component it needed to attach to, test-fitting the hose into the fitting, trimming it to length, "clocking" the fitting at the desired angle, marking the orientation of the hose and fitting, then crimping the fitting on right then and there in the car with a hand-held Mastercool 71500 Hydra-Krimp. I remember asking him "How does anyone ever get this right if they don't have the car in front of them?" He deadpanned "They don't."

There were some teething issues with the E9's a/c system, but over time, I got it better and colder, and it transformed my relationship with the car. It became comfortable to go out to dinner with my wife in, or to take on long trips in hot weather. Many folks say that instead of R12 or R134a, they use R75/2 ("75 mph, two windows rolled down"). In the a/c book, I tell the story of how I was heading home from The Vintage in the E9, crossing Pennsylvania in 90-degree temperatures and 90% humidity, windows up, cool, living the dream, and passed two guys I know from VT driving a tii, both windows down, and rivers of sweat running off them that were so thick that their perspiration was literally spitting out of the car. I'm not a bad person, but I literally thought "How's that R75/2 workin' for you folks now?"

As the a/c installation in the E9 required maintenance and rework over the years, I gradually amassed the manifold gauge set, vacuum pump, adapters, and the hose-crimping tool I needed to do it all myself. Since then, I've done several other from-scratch retrofits including my '79 Euro 635CSi, considerably more complicated as the a/c shares ductwork and electronic controls with the heat. And I modernized several 2002 a/c systems. But, surprisingly, I had never done a from-scratch retrofit into a 2002.

Until Louie.

First, let me take a quick tour of 2002 a/c systems. As I and others have written, and as you probably already know, no 2002 had factory air, but many had dealer-installed packages. There were three different ones that I'm aware of: Behr, Frigiking, and Clardy. Since Behr did the a/c in the Bavaria and the E9 coupe, it's no surprise that the Behr system in the 2002 is generally regarded as having the most factory look. In this piece I wrote for Hagerty last month, I detailed the major differences between the systems. In addition to the system's appearances, the main things you need to know are these:

--The Behr system uses an evaporator assembly that contains the evaporator core, blower motor, and an old-school externally-equalized expansion valve. In order to replace any of these components, the evaporator assembly must be removed from under the dashboard and opened up. It came with a large, heavy upright York compressor that looks like a lawnmower engine and has a giant bracket to support it that actually wraps around the water pump and is secured by two of the pump's bolts into the block, requiring the compressor and bracket to be disconnected to replace the water pump, at which point many owners left it off the car.

Behr 2002 console and faceplate

Behr 2002 evaporator assembly

Behr 2002 evaporator core and old school externally regulated expansion valve

--The Frigiking system, like the Behr system, uses an externally-equalized expansion valve, but it is located OUTSIDE the evap assembly, so, at least in theory, it can be replaced without removing and opening up the box (well, maybe the latter). I believe the Frigiking system used the same upright York compressor and boat anchor of a bracket as the Behr. (pics courtesy Chris Roberts)

Frigiking faceplate

Frigiking evaporator assembly with externally-mounted externally-regulated expansion valve

--The Clardy system is different in several ways. In terms of the expansion valve, it's is the only one of the three that uses a modern block-style internally-regulated expansion valve. Like the Frigiking, the expansion valve is mounted outside the evaporator assembly, meaning it can be replaced without needing to open the assembly. Further, it's the only system where the blower fan is outside the plastic assembly. The way it does this is a little strange; the fan hangs into the passenger-side footwell. It's also the only system that, when new, came with a modern rotary-style Sanden 508 compressor and a compact bracket to mount it to the engine block. (pics courtesy Earle Meyers)

Clardy console and faceplate showing bulge on passenger side for fan

CapClardy evaporator assembly with fan on right sidetion

Clardy evaporator assembly showing externally-mounted internally-regulated expansion valve on left side

Back to Louie. As many of you know, I bought Louie, the decade-dead '72 2002tii, sight-unseen in the winter of 2017. I then went down to Louisville KY in a rented SUV loaded with tools and parts, spent nearly a week with Jake and Liz Metz who I'd met once for 15 minutes at The Vintage, resurrected Louie in Jake's pole barn, road-tripped the car home, and wrote the book Ran When Parked about the experience.

A few months later, while I was prepping Louie to run down to The Vintage, I helped my friend Jose Rosario sort out the a/c in his car. While I generally don't work on other people's cars, Jose's car has a Clardy a/c system in it, I never had seen one in the flesh, and I was curious about it. I fixed a few issues, shot one can of R134a into it (it had already been converted from R12), and was VERY impressed with how cold it got and how much air it moved. I resolved that if I ever found a Clardy system, or at least the evaporator assembly and console, I'd buy it. But they're far less common than the Behr or Frigiking systems.

I then drove Louie down to The Vintage in Asheville. While I was where, I stumbled into a fellow selling a full Clardy system he'd removed from his car. We talked, haggled, and for $250, it all was mine. I loaded it into Louie's back seat and drove it home with me. (I was just cleaning up after the installation, and found this taped to one of the boxes. I think it'll live in Louie's glove compartment forever :^)

The note on the box that kicked the whole thing into motion four years ago.

I later saw that the fellow I bought it from had it advertised here on the FAQ:

I can't cover absolutely every detail I go into in my a/c book, but one of the things I say is that, whether you're doing a from-scratch install or a resurrection of a long-dead system, you'll use re-use the evaporator assembly and console but, if you're smart, you'll throw the rest away. This is because you'll update the compressor to a newer rotary-style unit, replace the obsolete serpentine-flow condenser and small fan with the biggest parallel-flow condenser and fan you can fit in the nose (especially important when converting from R12 to R134a), will replace every hose with custom hoses because a) the original hoses will be ancient dirty leaky garbage and b) they won't fit your new components anyway, and replace the receiver-drier because you have to every time the system is opened up for any length of time.

HOWEVER, if you have the opportunity to buy a full-up system at a good price, it's generally worth doing so because there may be pieces you need you're not aware of. On the E9 retrofit, this turned out to be the rare and fragile "intermediate piece" that couples the output of the evaporator assembly to the car's vents, and the two hard pipes that pass through the firewall and behind the glovebox (no room back there for hoses). In the Clardy system, the piece you don't know you need is the bracket that mounts the a/c console faceplate to the dash and holds the ashtray from the original console. It wasn't until four years later, when I opened up the boxes that contained the Clardy system, I saw the bracket, wondered what it was, and had no idea how lucky I was to have it. I'll get back to this in a later installment.

The other thing about a/c in Louie is that, since it's a tii, you need the uber-rare tii-specific crankshaft pulley with the cogged gear to run the injection belt AND the pulley for the a/c compressor. I believe that all regular 2002s except the earliest cars already have the otherwise-unused compressor pulley, but not tiis. At some point, it may have even been before I bought Louie, I saw a tii a/c crankshaft pulley on eBay. At $250, it wasn't cheap, but they only show up rarely, so I clicked and bought.

The hallowed tii-specific a/c front hub

Fast-forward to about a month ago. 90-degree temperatures moved into Boston. Having a 2002 (Bertha), a Bavaria, a 3.0CSi, and other more modern BMWs with a/c, what happens in hot weather is that the non-a/c cars just sit until fall. I had an epiphany: Why did I buy this full-up Clardy system and the tii a/c pulley if I'm not going to install them in the tii that I own that doesn't have a/c in it?

And so, operation Chillin' Louie was go. In these installments, I'll detail the choices I made and why, all pursuant to the goal of getting the car cold while attempting to satisfy the goals of a) doing so in a cost-effective fashion, and b) coming out of it with a system that, both inside the car and under the hood, doesn't look totally out of place in a survivor car like Louie.

--Rob

(My a/c book Just Needs a Recharge: The Hack Mechanic Guide to Vintage Air Conditioning can be purchased here on Amazon, or personally-inscribed copies of it and my other books can be purchased directly from me here.)