Jump to content
SAU Community

Recommended Posts

my Aircon doesn't work, the compressor has had it and i don't wanna waste any more money trying to fix it so im gonna get rid of the dead weight.

how do i get the gas out? do i have to take it to a pro?

i haven't looked very hard but what else can i take out apart from the compressor, hoses/pipes and the receiver dryer?

the heater should still work fine after i take this stuff out right?

Link to comment
https://www.sau.com.au/forums/topic/201535-removing-ac-parts/
Share on other sites

well its very illegal to release the aircon gas.

but if you did - the sutff you said, plus the fan on the front, some of the pipes are hard pipes and tricky to remove. and there is the aircon unit under the dash as well that can go, but you will have to support the side of the factory heater's fan somehow if you take that out as well.

Legally you have to have the gas reclaimed by a refrigeration mechanic, as refrigerents contain CFC's that wreck the environment...but its up to you what you do with it :D

Most SP34E gas (as used in 32's) contains a fluroecent die that is used to detect leaks in the system. So if your not going to have it reclaimed be careful when venting the gas as it stains almost everything it touches. Also another thing to remember is that if your skin comes in contact with the gas you can get frost bite, so be careful!

If it is the compressor that has failed, there's a fair chance it could just be the front seal, if this is the case it will be very oily around the front of the compressor and most of the gas will have escaped through the front seal. Having said this, even new hoses leak around 6% of gas a year and with 32's getting on these days it doesn't take a geneius to figure out that it could just be low on charge. It cost around $130 to reclaim/vac out/ and top up the charge in the system. Your best bet is to go to your local refrigeration joint (just rock up) and get them to hook it up to some guages, that is the only way of knowing for sure.

But at the end of the day if you want to just save yourself time/money and about 12kg of weight simply loosen one of the fittings on the system and the gas will vent out. You can even control the amount of flow by how much you loosen the fitting. You can also remove the condensor, which is located infront of the radiator, which will increase airflow to the radiator significantly, and you can also remove the evaperator and the TX valve which are located under the glovebox/behind the dash but thats a pretty painful job. As is getting the compressor out of there, you will have to remove the front L/H castor rods, swaybar etc just to get to it.

Anyway that was a massive rant but i hope that helps. Let us know what you decide to do :P

thanks for the help guys!

the system was re-gassed a year ago so im sure there is still plenty of gas in there...... im not to keen on paying someone to take the crap out....

from what you are saying i should remove the compressor from under the car?

My A/C died and mechanic said i need to replaced seized compressor. Bought a 2nd hand one and need to get it installed and the system regassed.

Any advice on replacing the comp.? It looks a bitch to get to it. Will replacing it be on an average mechanically able person's list? I'm keen to do DIY if it's reasonable.

Or is it soo depressing i should just make a mechanic suffer the work? :)

well i just spent the last 4 hours f**king with it and i have come to the conclusion that its a f**king bitch to remove....

i have removed every bolt that i can see but the thing won't budge i think i may have to remove the PS pump.... any tips on this?

bit off topic but i looked at the PS belt today and it has already been striped in 2 and its only been on the car 3000kms???

there are a few options if you cant remove it.

1. hit it with a hammer, it may just be completely wedged in there. mine was.. if you can spin it the same as you would to adjust the belt tension, give it a good whack with a rubber mallet or wood and see what happens

2. you missed the bolt on the back of the top rotating axis thing, or one of the ones underneath. there were 4 on my r33.

3. just take the whole support bracket off the block if you can get to it, there asre four large bolts

i do not recomend cracking the gas at home. there is a HELLUVA LOT more than you think it is and it will make you sick as it is not good to breathe in the chlorine. i assumede when mine was dgassed by the importer it would have no gas in it... turns out all i ever needed to get it working in the last 3 years was to buy a belt :D

tried the hammer, i did miss that bolt on the rotating thingy cause it is an absolute bitch to get to but i took all the bolts on the support out so i dont think it should matter.

yeh the gas was fun little hiss at first got bored opened up a little then WHAM the valve shoots off and out comes a stream like a meter high scared the crap outa me.... lasted 20 secs or so....

tried the hammer, i did miss that bolt on the rotating thingy cause it is an absolute bitch to get to but i took all the bolts on the support out so i dont think it should matter.

yeh the gas was fun little hiss at first got bored opened up a little then WHAM the valve shoots off and out comes a stream like a meter high scared the crap outa me.... lasted 20 secs or so....

So its off? All the bolts + support bracket is what it needs?

And whats the PS? Does gas spray out when you take it off? Just wanna be prepared when the sh!t sprays at me :D

naaa haven't got it off yet ill have another go tommorrow.

yeh its like an air jet i guess just do it where there is plenty of circulation.

i opened it at the valve by the passenger side of the radiator

PS = powersteering

Edited by battery

Hey guys, i'm still in the process of pulling apart a 32 thats in the shop so i will try and help you out with what i did. To get the compressor off you need to get at it from the top and the bottom (obviously the hoist helps here). There are 4 bolts all up holding it on and the two hoses connecting to it, the suction and discharge hoses. There are two bolts on the bottom which to get off you need to remove the Front L/H castor rod, swaybar, and brace/arm (not sure of the name) that connects from the front of the radiator support to just under where the swaybar mounts, the brace that the castor rods is bolted through. To get the two bolts off the top you will need to remove the PS belt. It's very frustrating but after a while you will get it. You will need to take the air filter/airbox off aswell as the intake pipe and maybe the hotpipe and emissions canister just to make things reachable and easier. We have alot of specialist A/C tools in the shop which makes things easier but you should be able to get the job done with a generic tool set. But i was constantly raising and lowering the hoist so it would be pretty tough going without it.

The money that you save on the labour side of things would definatly warrent trying it for yourself as the bill would be quite substantial as you have to pull everything apart just to get to the parts you need to. The 32 thats in the shop at the moment has been there since Monday! They're hard to get parts for as none of the parts are listed in our books. Luckily the customer had a half cut sitting at home. But alas i will try and frequent this thread more often so i can try and answer some of your questions. Good luck guys.

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now


  • Similar Content

  • Latest Posts

    • Update 3: Hi all It's been a while. Quite a lot of things happened in the meantime, among other things the car is (almost) back together and ready to be started again. Things that I fixed or changed: Full turbo removal, fitting back the OEM turbo oil hardlines. Had to do quite a bit of research and parts shopping to get every last piece that I need and make it work with the GT2860 turbos, but it does work and is not hard to do. Proves that the previous owner(s) just did not want to. While I was there I set the preload for the wastegates to 0,9bar to hopefully make it easier for the tuner to hit the 370hp I need for the legal inspections that will follow later on. Boost can always go up if necessary. Fitted a AN10 line from the catch can to the intake hose to make the catchcan and hopefully the cam covers a slight vacuum to have less restrictive oil returns from the head and not have mud build up as harshly in the lines and catch can. Removed the entire front interior just shy of the dashboard itself to clean up some of the absolutely horrendous wiring, (hopefully) fix the bumpy tacho and put in LED bulbs while I was there. Also put in bulbs where there was none before, like the airbag one. I also used that chance to remove the LED rpm gauge on the steering column, which was also wired in absolute horror show fashion. Moved the 4in1 Prosport gauge from sitting in front of the OEM oil pressure gauge to the center console vents, I used a 3D printed vent piece to hold that gauge there. The HKB steering wheel boss was likely on incorrectly as I sometimes noticed the indicator reset being uneven for left vs. right. In the meantime also installed an airbag delete resistor, as one should. Installed Cube Speed premium short shifter. Feels pretty nice, hope it'll work great too when I actually get to drive. Also put on a fancy Dragon Ball shift knob, cause why not. My buddy was kind enough to weld the rust hole in the back, it was basically rusted through in the lowermost corner of the passenger side trunk area where the wheel arch, trunk panel and rear quarter all meet. Obviously there is still a lot of crustiness in various areas but as long as it's not rusted out I'll just treat and isolate the corrosion and pretend it's not there. Also had to put down a new ground wire for the rear subframe as the original one was BARELY there. Probably a bit controversial depending on who you ask about this... but I ended up just covering the crack in the side of the engine block, the one above the oil feed, with JB Weld. I used a generous amount and roughed up the whole area with a Dremel before, so I hope this will hold the coolant where it should be for the foreseeable future. Did a cam cover gasket job as the half moons were a bit leaky, and there too one could see the people who worked on this car before me were absolute tools. The same half moons were probably used like 3 times without even cleaning the old RTV off. Dremeled out the inside of the flange where the turbine housing mates onto the exhaust manifolds so the diameter matches, as the OEM exhaust manifolds are even narrower than the turbine housings as we all know. Even if this doesn't do much, I had them out anyways, so can't harm. Ideally one would port-match both the turbo and the manifold to the gasket size but I really didn't feel up to disassembling the turbine housings. Wrapped turbo outlet dumps in heat wrap band. Will do the frontpipe again as well as now the oil leak which promted me to tear apart half the engine in the first place is hopefully fixed. Fitted an ATI super damper to get rid of the worn old harmonic balancer. Surely one of the easiest and most worth to do mods. But torquing that ARP bolt to spec was a bitch without being able to lock the flywheel. Did some minor adjustments in the ECU tables to change some things I didn't like, like the launch control that was ALWAYS active. Treated rusty spots and surface corrosion on places I could get to and on many spots under the car, not pretty or ideal but good enough for now. Removed the N1 rear spats and the carbon surrounding for the tailpipe to put them back on with new adhesive as the old one was lifting in many spots, not pretty. Took out the passenger rear lamp housing... what do you know. Amateur work screwed me again here as they were glued in hard and removing it took a lot of force, so I broke one of the housing bolts off. And when removing the adhesive from the chassis the paint came right off too. Thankfully all the damaged area won't be visible later, but whoever did the very limited bodywork on this car needs to have their limbs chopped off piece by piece.   Quite a list if I do say so myself, but a lot of time was spent just discovering new shit that is wrong with the car and finding a solution or parts to fix it. My last problem that I now have the headache of dealing with is that the exhaust studs on the turbo outlets are M10x1.25 threaded, but the previous owner already put on regular M10 nuts so the threads are... weird. I only found this out the hard way. So now I will just try if I can in any way fit the front pipe regardless, if not I'll have to redo the studs with the turbos installed. Lesson learned for the future: Redo ALL studs you put your hands on, especially if they are old and the previous owners were inept maniacs. Thanks for reading if you did, will update when the engine runs again. Hope nothing breaks or leaks and I can do a test drive.
    • No those pads are DBA too  but they have colors too. I look at the and imo the green "street" are the best.
    • I’m not sure what happened I told them about sonic tunes free OTS tune and the next the I know .. I was booted..   To funny 
    • Yea - I mean I've seen my fuel pump which is decades old and uh, while I'm not saying this with real knowledge... but I sure get the ick at using anything in the fuel system that produced the state of that pump. Many years ago I went through multiple pumps (and strainers) before I dropped the tank to clean it out with extreme violence. I'm talking the car would do maybe 50km before coming to a halt, which resulted in me cleaning out the filter with some brake cleaner and going on my way. None of my stuff ever looked like what came out of your fuel tank. I don't think I'd be happy with it unless every single component was replaced (or at least checked/cleaned/confirmed to be clean here).
    • I'm not going to recommend an EBC pad. I don't like them. Just about anything else would suit me better. I've been using Intima pads for a while now.
×
×
  • Create New...