I thought I would ask you all for advice and let you know where I am at today on replacing all the rubber in an a/c system. So far today I removed all 3 hoses, accumulator, orifice tube & compressor. The system had almost no oil in it, but I found this in the other three DeLoreans I have re-gassed to date. The orifice tube had 3 bits of metal on it. I don't think this is from the compressor going bad, though. It looks like trash that had never been flushed out of the system from when it was new. Does this sound reasonable? To remove the hoses connecting to the compressor, I had to cut the ends off the front and pull them out toward the rear. When we started the project, Jim Sleeth (the car's owner) only wanted to replace the high-side hose which was the only one leaking (wet with oil). We thought we could remove it without cutting off the end because supposedly there is enough gap between the frame & underbody for the attached fitting to pass though. Well, not so. At this point we realized that we would not be able to put a pre-assembled hose on the car. Instead we would either need to thread the new hose through the frame first and then crimp on the end or we would have to lift the body off the frame to get clearance. Now since we were into it this far, Jim decided that we would do the job x2 and replace the low side hose as well. I heard a rumor that a certain DeLorean vendor replaces hoses by bending the lip of the frame down far enough to shove a pre-assembled hose back in there. I don't know if this is true or not, but neither Jim nor I thought this would be good for the frame. It would weaken the frame, look like crap afterwards, crack the epoxy and thus promote rust. I'm going to go to Amazon Hose & Rubber soon and have them make up new hoses with the new barrier type that is required for R-134a (but we are putting R-12 back.) What I hope they will do is crimp the fittings on only one side first and then later crimp the fittings at the compressor end after I have threaded them through in my shop. If they won't crimp fittings in their parking lot then my other option is Classic Auto A/C Manufacturing, but since they are in the A/C business I get the feeling that they would not like doing the menial work without charging for a whole system rebuild. And yet another option is having Amazon make pre-assembled hoses and then we lift the body off the frame just an inch or so to make room to fit the hoses on. But lifting the body even an inch may turn out to be a LOT of work and probably not worth it. Does anyone know how much of the front fascia would need to come apart? I think most of the pipes & hoses could stay connected. Comments welcome. Walt Yahoo! Groups Sponsor <http://rd.yahoo.com/M=251812.3170658.4537139.1261774/D=egroupweb/S=170512 6215:HM/A=1564415/R=0/*http://www.netflix.com/Default?mqso=60164784&partid =3170658> <http://us.adserver.yahoo.com/l?M=251812.3170658.4537139.1261774/D=egroupm ail/S=:HM/A=1564415/rand=709493533> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: DMCForum-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service <http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/> .
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