Classic Auto Air vs. Vintage air conversion kit for 1973 Non Air car. Recommendations/experience?

[ponyup]

Has anyone DYI installed a A/C kit. Looking for advice and tips.

 

[ptalbert33]

Has anyone DYI installed a A/C kit. Looking for advice and tips.

Just had classic air installed on my 71 and it turned out great. I’ve used vintage air in the past for my old pickups, but I highly recommend classic air for the 71-73 mustang. Mine was a non ac car.

 

[ptalbert33]

Has anyone DYI installed a A/C kit. Looking for advice and tips.

 

[71coop]

I installed the CAA kit for a non-air car 2 years ago - pretty straightforward and not hard to do. Everything fit as advertised. I'm not a fan of their controller, so I had to modify it to look a little more "period correct".

 

[tony-muscle]

I installed the CAA kit. It has clear instructions and it is straight forward. Take your time and tackle one part at the time. The most painful part for me was removing the factory A/C box.

Edit PS: I already had a Sanden compressor and had the bracketry figured out

 

[Whatcouldpossiblygowrong]

Has anyone DYI installed a A/C kit. Looking for advice and tips.

Has anyone DYI installed a A/C kit. Looking for advice and tips.

I installed classic air and was very straightforward. Looks great. I’m very satisfied with results.

 

[ponyup]

Appreciate the feedback and it sounds like Classic makes a good product.
Going to look at a few youtube videos and see if it is something I want to tackle myself.

 

[Mister 4x4]

I went with CAA on my non-A/C car, and my only complaint is that they have you just get a bigger belt for the compressor and route it in with the power steering belt circuit. I'm not a fan of having 4 pulleys on an old-school V-belt, so I went the extra step to get a proper A/C pulley set-up (3-groove crank pulley, idler arm, and bracketry). They also don't tell you how big the belt should be, so you'd have to do the string trick to find out.

There's another piece to the puzzle in the way of an adapter for the Sanden air compressor to the factory-style A/C idler pulley bracket (shown as the black metal bar bridging the gap between the compressor and bracketry - not my car, but this is the missing piece they don't tell you about). I believe the Monte Carlo bar is custom as well.



The Sanden adapter kit can be had at Original Air, which is a partner/subsidiary of Classic Auto Air: https://www.originalair.com/sanden-idler-adapter-kit

In that same section at Original Air are the other parts you'd need, but will wind up costing another $300+. Your best bet is to find a complete factory A/C bracket/idler pulley assembly via places like ebay, the forums, etc. I got 3-groove crank pulley from a parts car, and the rest of the bracketry from a member of these forums. Then picked-up the kit above for less than $40.

Hope this helps!

 

[jackf]

I put in a classic air. Works great. I'm not the best mechanic, so I ended up calling tech support a lot. They were very responsive. Excellent customer service in my opinion.

 

[rcadd1ct]

Nice thing about CAA it is always recirculating so you can block off the cowl area. I ended up cutting the rusty area from below and using lexan to patch the hole. Used a heat gun to form the lexan to the proper shape.

 

[mrgmhale]

Both Vintage Air andClassic Air have nice upgrade kits to put A/C into non-A/C Mustangs. We opted for Classic Air on our 73Mach 1, and were so pleased with the results that we got a 2nd kit for our 73 Mustang Convertible when we acquired it. Both Mustangs were originally non-A/C cars. I have heard nothing but good stuff with Vintage A/C products, but I decided to stick with what I knew would definitely work for us.

https://www.classicautoair.com/