Air Con

This might seem like a bit of a daft idea, but I love my car and don't
particularly want to change it. However, the only thing it doesn't have that
I really would like is air con.

Is it feasible to get air con retrofitted, or get parts of a scrap 164
Lusso? or is it just too expensive to be worth bothering with? I have a 95
164 TSpark

In article >,
Tom Boltwood > wrote:

> This might seem like a bit of a daft idea, but I love my car and don't
> particularly want to change it. However, the only thing it doesn't have that
> I really would like is air con.
>
> Is it feasible to get air con retrofitted, or get parts of a scrap 164
> Lusso? or is it just too expensive to be worth bothering with? I have a 95
> 164 TSpark

It would be a lot of work - a lot of work. I have a GTV-6. The thing
came with aircon when it was new, but somewhere in it's life, a previous
owner disconnected it and pulled all the plumbing out of the engine side
of the system while leaving the heat exchanger and fans intact in the
cabin (and the aircon radiator in place in front of the engine
radiator). When I decided to put a 3-liter motor in the car (to replace
the 2.5 that came in it) the engine I bought (only 5K original miles. It
had been in storage since being removed from an almost new, totaled-out
Alfa 75 [Milano Verde]) had a newer rotary-type compressor still
attached to it when I got it, so I decided what the hell, I'm going to
reconstruct the air conditioning system. All new hoses were made-up, new
General Motors dryer and control solenoids were sourced from an
aftermarket parts house (12 volt aircon parts are 12 volt aircon parts,
it doesn't matter who built 'em), and the radiator heat exchanger was
replaced with a larger, custom made unit (the original one leaked) and a
few relays et al were pulled from a wrecked GTV-6. In the cabin, the
dash was disassembled, the heat exchangers (some US Model GTV-6's, made
post 1984, had an auxiliary heat exchanger and squirrel-cage blower
fitted by Alfa Romeo USA to make the system more efficient. Alfa called
it the "Tropic-aire" system. My car has that) and ducting were all
checked and replaced where necessary. The whole thing cost about US$500
in parts, and almost US$1000 in labor. Since your odyssey will be
similar (except for purchasing new parts and having a custom aircon
radiator made), you can gauge the work involved from my experience.

--
George Graves
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"When I learned to use my new computer and found out what Microsoft Windows XP does best, I felt like I had just paid $700.00 for a deck of cards."