Has anybody converted from the York A/C compressor to either a Sanyo or Denso rotary compressor?
I have not converted my car. But about 12 years ago I converted a 1970 Mercury Cougar to a Sanden rotary compressor. I used a kit from Classic Auto Air - Air Conditioning & Heating for 70’s & Older Cars & Trucks. in Tampa Florida. I recommend giving them a call. They were very nice people and can probably help you out. The challenge is the front end "dress": the mounting brackets and pulley alignment. You will have to fabricate the mounting hardware, and it has to place the compressor's drive pulley to match the Ferrari pulleys. There's another aftermarket vendor, Vintage Air - Inventors of Performance Air Conditioning - www.vintageair.com , that probably has a bigger market share than the Tampa boys, particularly among street rodders. Maybe you should call them first. It's their gear which always shows up in the feature stories in the hot rod magazines like Popular Hot Rodding, Hot Rod, and Car Craft.
I used a Vintage Air kit when I rebuilt my 34 Ford Coupe street rod and it all worked well. The biggest issue with the Ferrari is, as you stated, the brackets need to be made. If the car has dual air then the capacity of the rotary compressor needs to be big enough. Also, I believe there are some compressors that can rotate in either direction. Need to pay attention to that when turning the compressor around. Al '84 400iA 50605 '04 360 Spider F1
I did this about 4 years ago. Basically a bolt on procedure. I had to use four washers (one at each mounting point) to get the pulley of the compressor in the same plain as the other pulleys. In my instance the belt size did not change. Another issue is the outlets on the new compressor face the wrong direction so I got a total of four 90 elbows and used two on each hose. At the same time I went with r134. The system works well. The compressor is smooth and quiet. To really finish the r134 conversion I need to put a bigger condenser in the front of the car, it is recommended that you increase the size by 25%. Also the orafice should be changed, but that will require a lot of work do I haven't bothered.
Don't remember off the top of my head the part numbers or even the company, I'm headed off to work so don't really have a chance to look them up now. The parts are generic conversion from York to Sanden style, not Ferrari specific. Here are a few pictures I just took, two from the pax side and the last from the driver side. On the first picture you can see the washer I used between the compressor and the black bracket, this is for belt alignment. I used a depth gauge and measured from the cylinder head to the center of the pulley with the original compressor. I then did a trial fit with the new compressor and came up with an amount I had to move the compressor. I searched and found some heavy duty washers that put me within .002 of the original set up. The first picture also shows the two 90 degree fittings to make the required 180 degree turn to match with the original hoses. In a perfect world (IE enough spare time) I would replace the hoses with new ones and eliminate the 90 degree fittings. I included the picture from the driver’s side just to show some more detail of the install. In the background you can see the new drier. Anytime a system is opened up this should also be replaced, once again it is a standard part and not Ferrari specific. Another bonus of this swap is it takes up a lot less room in the engine compartment. The system was completely nonfunctioning in my car when I got it. The car was in Iowa and I had less than a week to get the a/c working prior to the trip to Alaska. Once I did the install I took it to an auto a/c shop. They flushed the system, evacuated it for 12 hours, then added the r134 and oil, for what they charged I could have bought the tools and done it myself but then I'd have to find a way to get them home. Someday I'll put in a bigger condenser, replace the orifice nozzle, and make some new lines. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
That baby looks like this one: Sanden SD 505 / SD 5H09 Compressor Double V-belt Pulley - Compressors Nostalgic Air Parts describes in this vid the difference of the Sanden & the SSB (Shanghia Sanden Behr) compressors: [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wtE76BrGCU]A/C Compressor Sanden vs Chinese - YouTube[/ame] You can even mount these side ways or upside down They have a bunch of other vids on all sorts of maintanence of the these on the same YouTube web page.
Brackets are easy to find, hoses and fittings are more of a pain. I installed a Sanden SD7H15, which is a heavier duty compressor than the more common 5 series. But the advantage of going with the 5-series is that you probably end up with friendlier fittings; I needed to replace the back head plate and then took some time to find service fittings. A new Sanden compressor is actually pretty cheap, less than $150. No need to buy a Chinese copy or rebuilt/used. My solution works well with R134, even in Houston in slow traffic...I have considered (and especially if you are making new hoses would suggest) replacing the stock condenser with a parallel flow type (ACkits.com ), but for the meanwhile the solution works very nicely--Lee
