Air - Conditioning and Box?

RacerX1166 · 04-26-2009, 11:42 AM

Initial rant - I'm getting tired of finding issues with my new to me 89 Coupe caused by other folks being less than thorough.

That being said, as noted in my title, I've got two unrelated questions:

1) Can the airbox on my car be buttoned up without removal? While playing around in the engine compartment this afternoon, I noticed that the back two latches on my airbox were not fastened. Since the engine was hot, and I was not prepared to mess with it, (90 degree ambient didn't help) I didn't attempt to put the whole thing back together and figured I'd ask before subjecting the neighborhood to a significant amount of profanity. If, the airbox needs to come out, what's the easiest way? Bentley is not much help there.

2) The age old question of a/c. When I purchased the car in November, I had the dealer upgrade the system to R134. Since I bought the car in November, I had no opportunity to really determine the system's capability. Now that I need a/c, I've noticed it's worse than I expected it would be. I'm getting not much volume and my guess is that the vent temp is in the high 40 range. Is this as good as it gets or could I have lost some R134 while the car was in storage, necessitating a recharge?

Any assistance/guidance would be appreciated.

Closing rant - The reason I was under the hood and found the airbox issue was because I was continuing to add oil to the tank. When I bought the car from a very well known and respected Porsche specialist, he gave me the whole song and dance about not over filling the tank and how to read the oil gauge. He led me to believe that the gauge sitting on the border of the red zone was correct. Now that I've become more in tune with what the car needs (and gone through my Bentley), I checked the level using the dipstick. No surprise that the dipstick wasn't even wet. Not wanting to overfill, I've been adding a bit at a time over the last few days. 3 and 1/2 quarts later, the level is midway between the marks on the dipstick. I love my car but just dealing with all of the unknowns and BS issues has really taken some of the luster off of the 'perfect' car that it was touted to be. Of course, doing all of this work on my own, I know that it's done right and will be able to sleep a bit better. Plus, I'm getting a great education on my baby.

Done ranting now....thanks for listening.

scottb · 04-26-2009, 12:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by RacerX1166

2) The age old question of a/c. When I purchased the car in November, I had the dealer upgrade the system to R134. Since I bought the car in November, I had no opportunity to really determine the system's capability. Now that I need a/c, I've noticed it's worse than I expected it would be. I'm getting not much volume and my guess is that the vent temp is in the high 40 range. Is this as good as it gets or could I have lost some R134 while the car was in storage, necessitating a recharge?

If the system has the original hoses, then likely you've lost some R134. This is because the original hoses were designed to leak. If you want cold a/c, you'll have to replace the a/c hoses with barrier hose, and do a bunch of other upgrades. Do a search here on the board -- there are lots of people who have done a/c upgrades. You can search my name, Mthomas58, Jim Sims, and others. You'll get a ton of information.

BRP83SC · 04-26-2009, 04:09 PM

check this out

http://www.griffiths.com/porsche/ac/ice/

jmh61 · 04-26-2009, 04:53 PM

You can fasten the airbox without removing it. It's no fun though. I can barely do it and usually get a crape or two. My 15 year old son, with smaller hands, can do it no problem. Best done when the engine is cold...

Talewinds · Talewinds's Garage

You.
Me.
Boat.
Same.

My new to me 88'. In EVERY case so far where I've bought a simple "bolt-in" retrofit, upgrade or improvement there has been nothing close to a simple bolt-in swap. Everything has required considerable alteration, modification, or customization. For example, saturday morning I was going to simply bolt-in the heater backdate driver side sheet metal in place of the engine blower. Just an FYI for anyone considering this mod, it's not so much that the bolt holes don't line up (which they don't, BTW), it's more that the sheet metal shape is really only in the ballpark, and just barely. For a simple bolt-in I would say it required some significant modification and persuasion to cause it to fit. Simple bolt-in? Maybe 1 hour if I took my time to enjoy the process, yet here it is about 5 hours total time invested later and I'm still not finished. Waited a week for the parts to arrive from CA, and the OEM style cardboard/ alum flex hose just doesn't work properly for this backdate exercise. Now I've just ordered the Aircraft Spruce Sceet, and second-day'd it because I'm sick of seeing my Carrera siting there with half its engine guts puked out while the weather is perfect and I should be drivin' it.

Learning experiences for sure!

RacerX1166 · 04-27-2009, 04:50 AM

Thanks for all of the input. These issues became the least of my concerns after last night when a cover from one of the fluoro fixtures in the house I'm renting decided to drop on my Carrera and bounce off my Lexus.

Damage to the roof of the Porsche and bumper of the Lexus. There may be more but I was too busy cursing and needed to get to the office.

I thought I was renting a pretty upscale house but this thing has been a piece of crap. My all original paint 89 Coupe will no longer be able to retain that in its description. I figure, even with a top shelf glass out respray, the car just lost $5k in value.

javadog · 04-27-2009, 05:15 AM

The roof of the 911 might be fixable without painting the car. Show us a picture when you can. You'd be surprised what can be done by someone with skill.

JR

ljowdy · 05:44 AM

FYI,,, upgrading to 134 really isn't an upgrade. It's just a convienence since R12 has become so expensive. R12 cools better than 134.

I changed out the entire system on my 1973 by buying a Griffiths kit which included a new compressor, new barrier hoses, 3rd condenser with fan, mounted under the left rear wheel, new evaporator, new expansion valve, new dryer. It took me about 7 hours to strip out the old stuff and install the new components. Although it was expensive, I choose to use R12 freon. It now blows very cold air and works far better than any Porsche factory air from that era and model of car.

ps, I had a large Ice Chest in the rafters of my garage and it fell on the roof of my previously owned 2002 996. I had it repaired and quite frankly, it was totally unnoticeable.

RacerX1166 · 04-27-2009, 07:17 AM

Well, the body work issue sounds encouraging. Thanks for the notes.

I'll take a full inventory of the damage over lunch and snap some pics. I only noticed the roof before I left but the engine cover was open too so it may have gotten a tap. I'm sure most on this forum can empathise with my sheer anger/frustration when I walked out and saw the damage this morning along with the associated lack of clear thought.

Sounds like I'm either spending a chunk of money on paint or a/c this year! While I might be able to do the a/c myself, this would fall into the category where paying someone to do it would be worth reducing the frustration factor. I was going to say I want to lock it in the garage and not let anyone near it but it's not safe there either!!!!